


Demitasse

by Misaya



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Barista Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Blow Jobs, Breathplay, Coffee, College Student Eren Yeager, Desk Sex, Eruri Week, Exhibitionism, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Humor, Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin) and Cleaning, Light-Hearted, M/M, Minor Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager, Moving In Together, Multiple Orgasms, Office Sex, Oral Sex, Pajamas & Sleepwear, Porn with Feelings, Professor Erwin Smith, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Content, Slice of Life, Suit Kink, Suit Sex, Tea, Teacher/Student Roleplay, University
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 12:55:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 35,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2151507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misaya/pseuds/Misaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The recipe for a relationship: one very no good, very bad, particularly horrendous morning, two burnt fingers, some orange peel, shaved fine, and one irritatingly handsome stranger who clearly doesn't understand the rules of Levi's neatly ordered world. </p><p>Erwin/Levi coffeeshop AU, tags updated with further writing, rating subject to change.</p><p>Sexual Content begins in Chapter 5 (Instant Mix)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Caffe Medici

Levi yawned and rubbed his eyes, still trying to wake up even as the morning's rays shone through the coffee shop's plate glass front windows. It was far too early for working, and Levi was personally of the opinion that it was criminal to get out of bed and go to work before the sun did. But the sun didn't have a boss (unless one were to believe in Greek or Roman mythology or any form of higher being), and the sun probably didn't have such worldly troubles as money. 

"Do you want a side of your coffee with your milk?" Zöe asked, bustling around behind him, wiping down the espresso machines and checking to make sure they had enough filters and cups and lids for the day. She turned, gave him a sunny smile (Levi was also personally of the opinion that she was possessed by some demon; no one in their right mind could be this happy to be up this early, the clock indicated it was just a few minutes past six-thirty), and handed him a paper cup. 

He rolled his eyes at her, and stretched, taking a sip of his milky coffee, just the slightest hint of bitterness clinging to the corners of his mouth. He exhaled, sighing, setting the paper cup down by the register. He pressed a few buttons, frowned at the still-stubbornly closed drawer, cursed a bit, slapped it when Zöe was in the storeroom measuring out coffee grounds and opening new boxes of peppermint and oolong tea. Once the drawer finally dislodged itself with a clang that Levi felt sure could have risen the dead, he took out cardboard rolls of coins, new pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters, shiny and smelling of copper and soap, and spilled them into the drawer's slots with a shower of tiny clinks that were supremely satisfying. 

He took another sip of his coffee, took another glance at the clock. Six-fifty. 

He sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck, going out from behind the counter to make sure the sugar packets and straws and canisters of spices were all lined up and neatly arranged on the table just to the side of the espresso machine. He was relatively particular about it, and though Zöe teased him to no end about it, cinnamon had to be in the middle, flanked neatly by the bottle of liquid syrup and the tin of chai spice which released soft scents of cardamom and nutmeg whenever somebody opened it. He uncapped the top now, took a whiff, sending his nose tingling with the giddy scent, something like Christmas and Thanksgiving and the middle of summer all at the same time. 

"Levi!" Zöe shouted from the counter, where she was brewing espresso. "Stop snorting the chai and unlock the door! It's seven." 

He rolled his eyes at her, vaguely wondered if she knew that injecting nutmeg intravenously was lethal, before going over to the door and unlocking it. 

* * *

Levi hated mornings. Waking up was always an inconvenience, but this particular morning was particularly bad. He'd burnt his index finger on his toaster that morning (surprisingly, his bread had come out looking as untoasted as it had going in), he hadn't had time to iron his shirt, and it wasn't until he'd gotten on the subway to go to work that he looked down and found that he was wearing two different shoes. He consoled himself with the fact that nobody would notice unless they were doing a very thorough inspection of his footwear, but he'd noticed, and that was just as bad. 

He was able to distract himself with work, rote and boring, the high-level executives coming in and ordering the same thing after the same thing. Nonfat lattes, cappuccinos, Americanos with extra shots of espresso, and he strode quickly between the register and the espresso machine and the sinks, pouring cream and froth into the tops of wide-mouthed glass mugs into swirls and leaves and little cats with dots of chocolate syrup for the eyes. If one were to ask about the coffee art (and one would specifically NOT ask, Levi looked frighteningly uninviting in the mornings), he would probably tell you that he was just trying to keep his brain from rotting from work-related monotony through artistic pursuit. At this point, he would glare you down and you would hurry away, your cat-topped coffee clutched in your hands. 

It wasn't until after the morning rush ended at half-past nine and Levi's wrist was slightly sore from whipping froth and cream that the very bad, very no-good, very particularly horrendous thing happened.

"I would like a Caffe Medici, please." 

Levi looked up from the register where he was sorting out the crumpled bills from the non-crumpled ones specifically for the purpose of smoothing them out later. 

"You'd like a what now?" he asked in disbelief. Though listed right up there on the chalkboard menu along with the lattes and mochas, close to nobody ordered it due to a lack of knowledge about what the drink itself was. 

"A Caffe Medici," was the reply, and Levi was hard pressed to drag his eyes away from the twinkling blue eyes that looked down at him. He looked quite like that one actor he'd seen on television the other night in some superhero movie or another. "I'm not Captain America, if that's what you're wondering." 

Levi tore his gaze away, glowering as the man laughed and he punched buttons furiously on the register, nearly ripping the $5 out of the man's hand (good God he hadn't been aware people could have such big hands, but then again the man himself was practically a giant) and glaring down at Lincoln angrily as though it were the source of all his problems. Abe looked back up at him with a stern look, and Levi frowned disapprovingly at him, noting the creases and rips down the middle and the spots of tape where it had been patched together. There wouldn't be any redemption for that bill, and Levi was seriously considering telling the man that it was positively illegal to accept defaced currency, and could he please provide another bill or another form of payment, but he looked back up and was slightly miffed to find that the man had already gone over to fiddle with the tins of spices. Levi almost gave himself an aneurysm watching the man absentmindedly move the tin of chai to the middle, and he abruptly turned around to brew the double shot of espresso. 

He shaved orange peel into the bottom of a glass cup, poured in a generous spoonful of chocolate syrup before reaching out for the espresso. Unfortunately, the metal was frighteningly hot, hotter than usual, and Levi swore as he dropped the double shot on the floor. He didn't even have to look up to know the man was laughing at him, and he ground his teeth together as he placed another cup under the drip. 

He finished the drink off with a little dollop of whipped cream and a few gratings of dark chocolate, and holding it firmly in his unburnt hand, walked over to the man and set it down with a satisfying sounding chink of glass on glass. 

The man looked up at him, nodded his head a little bit in thanks. Levi was walking back to the register, ready to settle in for a comforting morning of smoothing out crumpled currency, when the man called out, "Did you know you're wearing two different shoes?" 

Levi didn't realise he'd been clenching his teeth until he finally stared daggers at the strong lines of the stranger's back as he walked out the door and relaxed an infinitesimal amount, his jaw aching with the sudden release of pressure. 

"He was cute," Zöe said from behind him, staring out the plate glass windows dreamily at the stranger's retreating back on the pavement outside. "He looks fantastic." 

"He's a monster," Levi snarled viciously, and retreated to the storeroom to count coffee filters for the rest of the morning. 


	2. Caffe Latte

The next time Levi saw him it was just a few days later in the early afternoon. He came in, setting the bells hung over the entrance jingling. Levi looked up from his table in the corner where he was absentmindedly sipping a cup of coffee milk and procrastinating on mopping up the floors. Levi didn't particularly like looking at the spilt puddle of coffee that was over in the corner by the spices table, but he felt sure the mop in the back of the storeroom was slowly but surely growing the next epidemic. He was sorely tempted to bring a mop from home, or better yet, his Swiffer, but the subway wasn't exactly the cleanest place in which to transport it. Levi suppressed a shudder at the thought of what might be growing beneath the carpeted seats. 

That morning had been relatively uneventful: namely, he'd had time to press his shirt, his toast came out perfectly toasty (he'd still burnt his thumb trying to extract it from the toaster's gaping maw, however), and he was wearing the matching shoes. Under other circumstances, Levi should have been perfectly content, but he found himself glaring in irritation at the blonde man's back as he walked up to the counter and contemplated the menu for a few moments before looking around, his blue eyes settling on him in the corner. Levi had half a mind to call for Zöe, who was off in the storeroom probably scraping off samples for her petri dish from the sink in the back, but he figured that that would be a rather immature course of action. And Levi Ackerman was nothing if not mature. 

"Hi," the man said, smiling at him as Levi walked over and situated himself behind the register. The bills were sorted just the way he liked them, the crispest, cleanest on the top, and the uglier ones somewhere in the middle and back of the stack. "I see you're wearing matching shoes today." 

"Yes," Levi sniffed, "the other day was a hideous aberration, never to be repeated." He tried to ignore the way the stranger was smiling at him, tried to ignore the fact that this particular day the man's choice of outfit was particularly dashing (he'd always been a sucker for polo sweater vests, and the ice blue of the man's polo shirt really did wonders for his eyes), tried to ignore the way the stranger's (new?) black-framed glasses screamed of intelligence. Had Levi been any other person, he might have found himself thinking that the stranger was incredibly handsome. However, since he was Levi, he found himself thinking that the stranger was probably incredibly imbecilic and just happened to have an impeccable appearance and sense of fashion. 

He cleared his throat. "What did you say you wanted?" 

The stranger shook his head. "I didn't yet," he said. "I was thinking of getting another Caffe Medici, but after last time, I figured I'd save your poor fingers from another burn." 

Levi scowled at him. "I'm perfectly capable of making  _doppios,_ thank you very much," he told him, a little irritated at the way he had to crane his neck back to look up at the man. 

"Oh? Your thumb says otherwise," the man said, pointing to Levi's hand which was resting on top of the counter. Levi frowned and snatched the offending limb back, muttered something about his vicious toaster and its quest for blood that had the stranger laughing. 

"You know, you ought to smile more," the man told him, reaching over the counter and flicking Levi's cheek. Levi's vision flashed red and he was seriously contemplating sinking his teeth into the man's hand. "You'll get wrinkles before too long."

"Thanks for the advice, Professor," he said, rolling his eyes. The man looked amused and just the tiniest bit surprised. 

"How'd you deduce that one?" he asked, resting his elbows on the counter and looking down at Levi. Levi, against all his principles, started praying to some higher being that another customer would walk in so the stranger would be forced to place an order and sit down. 

Levi shrugged, pointed at the stranger's chest. "I don't know many other professions in which one could possibly be coerced into buying and wearing a pocket protector. And the university isn't too far from here." 

The man smiled at him, and Levi frowned, trying to ignore the crinkles in the corners of the man's eyes and biting at the inside of his cheek to stop an errant, wayward smile from showing up. 

He was about to step way out of line, and ask the man if he too watched Sherlock, but the bells over the door set up clanging again and a gaggle of university students spilled in, clutching bookbags and laptops and textbooks with papers all loose stuffed inside. 

"Erwin!" one of the girls called, and the man turned away from Levi to greet her. 

The students surrounded him, all chattering away at once, and Levi caught snatches of their conversation, "wanted to talk to you about my paper topic," "wondered if you might be able to change your office hours this week, I've got volleyball practice," "hoped we could go over the answers to the practice exam you posted online." 

"What brings you guys here?" the man - Erwin - asked them, and one of the laptop-toting students shot a shy glance at Levi before saying, "The barista here does really good latte art, and it's Mikasa's birthday, but we don't really have much money to treat her to an actual dinner." Attention turned to a dark-haired girl in half-open beige jacket, who had no comment on the whole matter. 

"Is that right?" Erwin asked, turning to Mikasa, who just gave him a short nod and a little mumble of confirmation. "Well, in that case, let me get this one. God knows you're paying enough for tuition as it is."  

* * *

The next twenty minutes or so, Levi hurried from the steam pitcher to the espresso machine and back again, pouring out carefully measured shots of espresso into wide-mouthed cups and whisking whipped cream and foam in separate bowls. He bent over the cups, the pitcher of steamed milk measured precisely at 153 F clutched firmly in his left hand as he shook his wrist gently over the cups, pouring the steamed milk into the rich brown of the espresso and watching with a sort of content pleasure as the deep brown turned milkier and he drew swirls and rosettes and fleur de lis on the surface. 

For Mikasa's, he carefully shaped a mound of foam on the surface of the coffee, taking a toothpick and dragging it through chocolate syrup, lightly tracing over the foam to form round eyes and trace little brown whiskers onto the cat's face. At the other half of the cup, he poured a careful little swirl of milk, dragging little horizontal chocolate lines through the white for the cat's striped tail. He stepped back and looked at the finished work in satisfaction before carefully placing the cups onto a tray and carrying the tray over to where Erwin and his students were chatting. 

They oohed and aahed over the designs, and Levi busied himself with cleaning up the pitchers and whisks and bowls, humming to himself and listening to the sounds of their conversation. Once the utensils and equipment was pristine and glistening again, Levi busied himself with wiping down the counter, finding his eyes straying of their own accord towards Erwin, who was lounging in his chair, talking to his students and his hands tracing through the air as he made gestures to supplement his sentences. Levi rested his face in his palm, absentmindedly wiping down the granite, and watched the afternoon sun thread through Erwin's hair.

After another half-hour or so and an impromptu song of "Happy Birthday, happy birthday to you!" led by a lean dark-haired boy with the most interesting turquoise eyes Levi had ever seen, Erwin finally stood up and stretched, begging his leave, something about papers to grade and exams to revise. His students stood up as well, leaving their empty cups scattered around the black granite tabletops, and Mikasa caught Levi's eye as she was leaving, gave him a short nod that Levi duly returned. 

He went over to stack the cups into a black plastic bin when a small corner of green trapped under a saucer caught his eye. He put the empty cup and saucer into his bin, looked at the $5 bill - the very neat, very uncrumpled, very untorn - $5 bill. 

He turned it over, looked at Abe's uncompromising gaze, squinted to read the words written hastily in black scrawl just to the left of the president's face. 

"Consider it a replacement for last time." 

He smiled to himself, made a mental note to tell Erwin that writing on currency was still technically defacement the next time he came in, and decided that perhaps he wasn't quite as imbecilic as he previously thought. 

 


	3. Espresso Doppio

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aware that the Roman demigod of coffee is not named Levi (is there even one? I don't know; if there is, his name most certainly isn't Levi), but it's all part of the story.

Erwin comes in a few days later on a Monday morning, right at seven on the dot, as Levi is still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and halfheartedly tucking in his shirt and creasing his collar. His toaster had given him a particular bad burn, and he'd grumbled the whole subway ride over, cradling his burnt thumb in his other hand and scowling at anybody who happened to look at him in just the slightest off way. 

Levi, however, does find his day brightening marginally when Erwin bursts through the coffee shop's front door, sending the bells jingling violently. He looks worse than Levi currently feels, minus the homicidal toaster, his dress shirt untucked and wrinkled, the collar falling down on one side, and the buttons done up wrong. Levi almost laughed at the way Erwin looked at him despairingly as he approached the counter, his hair messy and falling over one eye, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from giggling at how absurd he looked. 

"I want whatever the strongest thing you have is," Erwin said, fumbling in his pocket and extracting a rather crumpled $5. "And then make two of them." 

Levi arched a questioning eyebrow at him, and Erwin huffed a sigh and rolled his blue eyes at Levi before reaching out and pressing his palms against the bill, frowning as he smoothed out the wrinkles and creases. Levi had to fight back a smile as he plucked the now relatively smooth bill from beneath Erwin's palms and tucked it into the cash register before turning to the espresso machine and sliding a white porcelain cup beneath the drip. Erwin's footsteps clacked away, and he turned to watch him practically fling himself into a seat in the corner before pulling his black messenger bag onto his lap and rifling through it, pulling out a mess of papers and slapping them on the black granite tabletop. Levi watched as he ran his hands through his hair, tugging at the strands in the back -  _why were they a slightly darker colour than the rest?_ Levi wondered - in despair, making them stick straight out from his head and making him look like a rather distressed chicken. Levi snickered to himself as he pulled the first cup out from under the drip and stuck another one in. 

Levi set Erwin's two espresso  _doppios_ to the side before taking a small shot from the machine and pouring it into a cup with a healthy amount of milk. Carefully balancing the three items in his hands, he wandered over to the table where Erwin sat, tugging at his hair with one hand while the other frantically scribbled through the papers, leaving smatterings of red ink all over the sleeves of his shirt and the backs of his hands. 

"My God, my God, I can't even read this, what does it say, it's like reading Arabic," Erwin was muttering under his breath. He jumped as Levi sat down in the seat across from him, his wrist jerking and setting red streaking all the way through a paragraph. Levi set his espresso  _doppios_ in front of him with two satisfying, solid thunks before resting his chin in one hand and cradling his coffee milk with the other, his gaze wandering over the handwritten papers. 

"Grading?" he asked, as Erwin picked up a white porcelain cup -  _but my God his hands really were huge, or maybe espresso cups had just gotten tinier from the day before -_ and drained the glass in one swallow. 

"Oh my God," Erwin spluttered, choking and coughing. "What the hell is that?" he asked, looking up at Levi. "My heart just skipped about ten beats." 

Levi shrugged, taking another sip of his coffee milk. "You wanted the strongest thing we offered, so I made you  _doppios."_ Levi looked at the other, still-full porcelain cup by Erwin's hand. "You're probably okay to drink that. I don't know how much caffeine is needed to send a person into cardiac arrest, but a quadruple shot probably won't do you in. I know CPR, though, in that unlikely event. At any rate, you'd better drink that. I'm sure as hell not going to, it's way too disgusting. It's worse cold, too." 

Erwin glared at the cup as though it were completely to blame for his current misery before reaching out and tipping it into his mouth. Levi watched the smooth lines of his throat with fascination, the Adam's apple bobbing up and down. Erwin grimaced as he set the cup down, shuddering at the bitter taste, and returned to rifling through the papers and scrawling across them in red ink. Levi sighed and curled up in his armchair, closing his eyes and breathing in the soft, sweet scent of his coffee milk, listening to Erwin mumbling under his breath and trying to get himself mentally motivated for the morning rush, which was due to start any minute now. 

"This is either the best allegory I've ever read or the worst one," Erwin muttered. "Hey, do you know anything about Norse mythology?" 

Levi plucked the paper out from under Erwin's pen, squinting at the writing -  _it really was like trying to read Arabic -_ and taking a few moments to read through the paragraph where Erwin's markings ended. He took a sip of his coffee milk, read the next sentence, and then almost spat it out all over the page with a laugh. 

"Are you all right?" Erwin asked, concerned. "Are you choking?" When Levi didn't reply, coughing, Erwin reached over the table, grasping him by the shoulders and shaking. "Blink twice if you're dying," Erwin said frantically, "I don't know CPR so if you need an ambulance I'm going to need to know right now." 

Levi pushed him away, still gasping for breath, his eyes filled with merry tears and his cup of coffee milk dangerously close to spilling all over the floor. Once he'd got his breath back, he looked across the table at Erwin, who still looked terribly worried about Levi's close brush with death, and dissolved into laughter all over again. 

"Oh, God," he said, still giggling a bit as he wiped his eyes and handed the paper back to Erwin. "You're not very in tune with the times, are you?" 

Erwin arched a thick eyebrow at him in confusion. It was rather quite interesting how his eyebrows were brown, Levi thought to himself, considering that his hair was mostly blonde...or maybe he dyed it, and his roots just happened to be showing? Levi too had gone through that phase in his life before he realised that bleaching black hair more often than not turned it a hideous shade of orange. "I wouldn't consider Norse mythology part of 'the times,'" Erwin said, making air quotation marks with his fingers.

Levi bit his tongue to stop himself from having another laughing fit. 

"Well, your student there," he said, snorting, "wrote a lovely synopsis of Thor: The Dark World." At his confused look, Levi elaborated: "It's a superhero movie that came out last year." 

Erwin looked positively distraught, and tangled his fingers in his hair, tugging on it some more and making even more strands stick up in disarray. It took all of Levi's willpower to keep from laughing at him, or from taking out his mobile and snapping a picture to post on Instagram under the tag #badhairday. 

"Oh my God," Erwin whispered, looking off into the distance, "oh my God," he breathed, burying his face in his hands, "I stayed up all night researching obscure Norse gods and goddesses for this?" When he pulled his hands away, Levi had to look away, nearly biting through his lip to stave off his laugh; the streaks of ink on Erwin's hands had managed to smudge all over his cheeks like blush gone wrong, and Levi was seriously contemplating doing an under-the-table candid shot to post on Instagram under the tag #badmakeover, but the man looked so much like a kicked puppy that he decided against it. 

The bell behind them rang, and Levi looked over to find the first of the suited executives spilling through the doorway to get their morning lattes before work. He stretched, lounging in his armchair for a few more luxurious moments, before taking Erwin's empty cups and standing up. 

"I can't honestly say I know too much about Norse mythology," he said, and Erwin looked up at him, "but the Roman demigod of coffee is named Levi." 

"How interesting," Erwin replied, "but I guess it would make sense for you to know that, being that you work here and all..." He trailed off, looked forlornly down at his papers again, and Levi resisted the urge to pat down his hair before he turned on his heel and walked back to the counter to start his day. 


	4. Coffee Milk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the conversation is so...awkward.

Levi had determined that Christopher Evans was quite possibly the most attractive combination of genes that was present in the world as of August 22nd, 2014. There was just something about that wheat golden hair, parted to the side, with undertones of brown just barely showing through, and those lovely blue eyes, and the height, and the planes of his cheekbones, that just all came together in a fantastic manner. Levi would never tell anyone this, but he kept a picture of Captain America sans helmet in his wallet, behind his driver's licence, in the place where other people might keep small cropped photos of their children or their pets. 

He was taking a quiet moment to admire the beauty of said picture, procrastinating on sweeping up and closing the shop for the night. Zöe had already run off somewhere, shouting something over her shoulder about time-sensitive bacterial cultures and how she had to get over to the lab right away. By "the lab," Levi had assumed she was running off home to her probably highly illegal basement laboratory. As he idly pulled out a half-full cup from under the espresso drip and wiped away any excess drops on the machine's spout, he wondered if he ought to report it to the authorities. Surely the Centre for Disease Control would most likely be interested in whatever epidemic Zöe was growing in her basement, but then again, Levi thought it might be a good idea to keep on Zöe's good side in the unlikely event that she unleashed biological weaponry onto the country. 

Levi eyed the half-full cup of espresso, grimacing. He absolutely hated wasting perfectly good espresso; to make matters worse, this wasn't even technically a full shot of espresso, and at best he could probably only make some coffee milk. The shop wasn't technically closed yet, but there was only a half hour left for its opening hours, and if Levi were being well and truly honest with himself, he was just closing up the shop early because he was particularly tired that day and just wanted to go home and ogle Chris Evans's latest photoshoot, armed with a bottle of lotion and a box of tissues. 

The bells jangled over the door, and Levi whipped around, his Swiffer held threateningly in hand (his brave little vacuum had survived the subway trip, thankfully, and Levi thought that those 1987 children's movies producers had gotten it all wrong, making a film about the most courageous tiny toaster, when in reality it should have been under the tagline "The Brave Little Swiffer." Granted, Swiffers hadn't been around in those days, but Levi was of the opinion that the world might have been a better place today had that been the case. In his lifetime, he'd gotten along with approximately 33% of the toasters he'd ever encountered, whereas he'd been fast friends with 100% of the Swiffers he'd ever had the privilege of using. His mother had told him as a child that he'd used to have a big brother, but one day he hadn't asked her before toasting a bagel, and the toaster in question ate him up bit by bit. Which was why Levi was an only child. Said toaster still resided in Levi's mother's kitchen, and though he'd been to school and was well aware that toasters did not have suitable anatomy that could be used for devouring a child, he was still wary of the machine whenever he went over to visit. 

"Good Lord!" Erwin shouted, holding up his hands in surrender. "Put that thing down before you take an eye out!" The Swiffer was twitching furiously in front of Erwin's nose, and Levi had assumed a fencing pose in his sudden panic about intruders coming into the coffee shop and riffling through the cash register, crumpling all the bills and stuffing them into burlap sacks and mixing all the denominations together. That thought had Levi more panicked than the thought of actual robbers. 

"Oh, it's the Professor," he said, letting the threatening pad of the Swiffer drop a few inches. "I thought you were a burglar, come to burgle me." 

Erwin rolled his eyes. "More like you thought I was here to crumple up the bills in your wallet and then leave without smoothing them out." Just the thought of that had Levi's blood pressure jumping up a few points. 

"Well," Levi protested, "no normal people come in to buy coffee this late at night." As an afterthought, he lowered the Swiffer fully to the ground and looked up cautiously at Erwin, who, Levi couldn't help but notice, towered over him just like Chris Evans probably would have. If he were to guesstimate, Erwin and Captain America were probably the same height, although Levi would never, ever keep a picture of Erwin in his wallet. "You're...not here to burgle me, are you?" 

"Glad you think so much of me," Erwin snorted. "I came by to order something, much like normal people do at a coffee shop. Your front door says you don't close until 9 PM, and you were still in here, so I thought that maybe I could just get something, if it's not too much trouble for you." 

Levi sighed, thought of the half-shot of espresso growing cold on the counter, thought about the work it would take to open the top of the espresso machine and heft up the bag of coffee grounds (which Erwin would have to hand up to him, Levi didn't have great balance climbing the little stepladder he needed to reach the top of the machine). He carefully avoided looking at Erwin's hopeful expression, balanced the inconvenience and irritation of making a new pot of espresso with the fact that he had nearly spit coffee milk all over Erwin's student's paper (although it was truly ludicrous), and decided that he was just the slightest bit in the black in the balance of the relationship. 

"I've only got a half-shot left, and I can't really work wonders with that," he said, studiously looking at Erwin's forehead and avoiding his gaze. 

Erwin pouted, honest to God pouted, and Levi suddenly felt the balance tip dangerously into the red. 

"Fine, fine," he grumbled, gently leaning the Swiffer against a table. "I'll see what I can do, but you'd better finish Swiffering up the floor in the meantime." 

Erwin grabbed the Swiffer with a huge, enthusiastic smile that nearly shattered Levi's pupils with its brightness, and before Levi could tell him to please be gentle with Sally (the Swiffer; Levi was fond of naming his appliances), began running the Swiffer over the floor in neat parallel, slightly overlapping lines, exactly as Levi had been doing. Levi watched him for a bit, nibbling anxiously at his lower lip and trying to ignore the fact that from behind, (and, if Levi were being well and truly honest with himself, from the front) Erwin Smith looked a fair bit like Chris Evans. 

* * *

Levi hummed to himself as he whipped cream in a stainless steel mixing bowl, flicking in chai spice from the precious tin on the corner table into the cream, which was rapidly rising into stiff peaks. The spice sent hues of cinnamon and nutmeg through the air, and Levi took a deep breath, another, another, almost burying his face in the green-and-silver tin. When he looked up, Erwin was standing on the other side of the counter, Sally held firmly in hand, gaping at him. 

"Are you...are you sniffing the spices?" he asked, almost incredulously. Levi shot him a glare, closed the lid firmly, and pushed it away from him. The cream in the stainless steel bowl was flecked with chai spice, and he carried the bowl over to the other counter, where he'd mixed the half-shot of espresso with a generous pouring of milk and some half-and-half. The coffee milk was a perfectly lovely shade of beige, and he took a spoon and covered the top of the cup with the spice-flecked cream. He hummed to himself as he drizzled a spoonful of chocolate syrup across the top of the cream, and presented it to Erwin with a flourish in satisfaction at another job well done. 

"It's coffee milk," he said, pushing it towards Erwin, "and the best thing I could come up with under the circumstances." 

Erwin traded Sally the Swiffer for the cup of coffee milk, and Levi watched as Erwin took a sip and looked up at him, his mouth ringed with froth. 

"It's very sweet," Erwin commented, "but good. I like it."

Levi busied himself with wiping down the counters, polishing the espresso machine to a fresh shine, topping up the canisters of sugar and cinnamon, and making sure the table of spices was properly arranged. Erwin sat at his customary table in the corner, sipping at his coffee milk and looking out the window. 

"I guess I get why you like the spices so much," Erwin said after a few minutes, when Levi had already recounted the bills in the cash register three times over and assured himself that they were all in their proper slots and properly uncreased. "They're nice." Erwin tipped his cup back, smearing froth and cream all around the corners of his mouth. "Maybe not nice enough to snort, but still nice." 

Levi rolled his eyes at him, flapped away Erwin's $5 with some muttered excuse about how it was the last of the day's coffee and anyway he couldn't very well reopen the cash register and readjust all the bills, now that would have been a true inconvenience. Erwin smiled at him, rubbing at the corners of his mouth with his thumb, and stepped behind the counter to wash his cup. There was just something about strong, tall blondes gripping scrub brushes that Levi particularly enjoyed. 

"So," Erwin murmured, reaching up with ease and placing the cup back in its place on one of the higher shelves in the cupboard, a feat which Levi had never previously been successful at without the aid of a stepstool. "I guess I'd better let you be getting back home. It's getting late." 

Levi checked his watch, was astonished to find that it was already an hour past closing time. The last subways and buses would have already left, long ago, and he groaned, burying his face in his hands and mentally calculating whether he had enough money to pay for a cab home. He wondered if it would be so horrible to just sleep in the coffee shop for a night; it might be quite pleasant, surrounded by the scent of fresh grounds and lemon floor polish...

"I can give you a ride home, if you want." Erwin was fidgeting, rocking from side to side, not meeting Levi's gaze. "It's probably a good idea, it's kind of dangerous walking home late at night and that kind of stuff..." 

"I suppose, yeah," Levi said, secretly grateful. He wasn't sure Sally could manage a night away from her charger, and he wasn't eager to hear her death rattle as her battery pack slowly ran out of juice and he sat by her side, powerless to do anything about it. "Yeah," he said, brightening and managing a smile. "I think I would like that."

* * *

Erwin's car was a silver Toyota that Levi almost had to take a running jump to get into, and Erwin smiled apologetically at him for the inconvenience. The interior of the car was smooth leather that smelled like good leather should, and a slight hint of the pine air freshener that hung from his rear view mirror. 

The next few minutes were filled with Levi directing him down side streets and intersections, until he finally pulled up in front of Levi's apartment building. Levi reached for the door handle, but Erwin reached over and clicked the door lock back down. Levi's grip tightened on Sally as he turned to face his potential assailant. 

"This is the part where you burgle me, isn't it?" Levi sighed, resigning himself to a fight to the death. 

"What is it with you and robbery?" Erwin asked, arching a curious eyebrow at him. "No. I'm not going to pin you down and rip your wallet out of your pocket and crumple up all your bills. I just wanted to say thanks. For putting yourself out of your way." 

"Right." Levi wasn't convinced that this was it. "And?" 

He couldn't see Erwin's expression in the darkness of the car. "And...um, are you free Friday night?" 

Levi stared at his silhouette, his mouth suddenly dry and Sally going limp in his fingers and rolling onto the floor. "Free for what?" he asked cautiously. 

Erwin cleared his throat, rubbed the back of his head, and even in the darkness Levi could make out the golden strands sticking straight out again. "For dinner, I guess. Or for a movie. Or both."

Levi gaped at him, even though Erwin probably couldn't see him. At his lack of response, Erwin groaned and buried his face in his hands, slumping over the steering wheel. "God, I'm so bad at this," he muttered to himself. "We haven't even been properly introduced yet." He held out a broad hand to Levi. "I'm Erwin Smith, assistant professor of psychology, but you probably already knew all that stuff. And you are?" 

Levi marvelled at the way his hand all but disappeared inside Erwin's palm. "I'm Levi Ackerman, professional latte artist." 

A pause. 

"A few weeks ago, didn't you say that Levi was the name for the Roman -" 

"Oh, look at the time," Levi cut in quickly, flapping his hand at the dashboard clock. "I really must be going, thanks for the ride, really appreciated." He tugged up the car lock before Erwin could finish his sentence, and hurried into his apartment building, hunching his shoulders to hide the scarlet flush on his cheeks from the highly-interested receptionist. 

It wasn't until he'd unlocked the door to his flat and had slumped down against it, tugging at his hair, that he realised he'd left Sally in the car. And that he'd never actually answered Erwin's question.

 


	5. Instant Mix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some very non-explicit sex in this chapter. However, from this point forward, there will be explicit(er) sex relatively frequently. Or that's the plan, at least. 
> 
> Furthermore, the below "sex scene" is not in any way intended to have undertones of rape. The "I don't like you" part is just...Levi, being Levi, and not intended to be noncon/dubcon in any way.

Levi spent the next few days alternating between abject despair, embarrassment, and mortification at his own actions. It was bad enough that he'd abandoned Sally to Erwin's mercy and she had probably breathed her last in the passenger seat of Erwin's car. Granted, the leather seats had been very clean the last time Levi had seen them, and Sally had survived the ride into work on the filthy subway, but it didn't make him feel any better about leaving her behind. He felt like Kate Winslet in Titanic (which he'd seen a total of 34 times) or like Mel Gibson in Casanova (which he'd seen only 10 times, owing to the fact that he found Leonardo DiCaprio much more fanciable). He woke up every morning and stared very hard at the empty corner of his kitchen pantry that Sally had previously occupied, her charger dangling from the wall, empty and abandoned. He'd dragged his old mop out of retirement (her name was Gretchen) and had swabbed his entire apartment, furiously staring at the floor and trying not to pout. 

Even Chris Evans' latest photoshoot had done nothing to cheer him up. He flicked through the pictures on his laptop listlessly, but not even the actor's lovely face could distract him from his misery. It didn't help that he'd grown a beard that made him look quite like a lumberjack, which Levi was not a big fan of, and he'd been forced to scroll back to a few other photoshoots where he appeared sans facial hair. More irritating was the fact that Erwin's face kept popping up in his mind when he went back to the earlier photoshoots, because Levi had decided it was time to be well and truly honest with himself and acknowledge the fact that clearly tall, well-built, blonde men were not all too uncommon, and it had been just a matter of probability that he'd run into a Chris Evans lookalike sooner or later. 

And if Levi was being very, very frank, he did find the professor attractive, in his own pocket-protector, Norse-mythology kind of way. He'd even gone so far as to scrawl on the back of his Chris Evans' wallet-sized photograph a little scribble of Erwin's name. 

He found himself craning his neck over the counter, standing up on his tiptoes every time the entrance bells jangled, simultaneously hoping it was him and fervently praying that it wasn't him. The week wore on without a single sighting of Erwin, and Levi slowly but surely began to go mad, wondering if the professor was avoiding him on purpose. 

He holed up in a corner of the stockroom during his breaks, clutching the canister of chai spice to his chest and rocking back and forth, staring at the coffee filters and extra porcelain cups and running through his head all of the other ways in which his relationship, his very, hideously platonic relationship, with Erwin could have gone. And then this led to him thinking about that one time he hadn't helped that old lady across the street, and the time when his mother had berated him about not going to church more often, and then that other time in school when he'd punched that one guy, and basically went on a mental guilt trip of everything he'd done wrong in his life, as we are all prone to doing at some point in our lives. 

He was just getting to his early childhood and regretting that he hadn't drunk more milk as a kid when Zöe stuck her head in, frowned at him, and told him to get out of the cupboard and go and get some fresh air, and oh, he had someone asking for him, that very cute man that had been coming in lately. 

Levi almost left fingernail scratches on the wood floor as she dragged him out. 

It was almost six in the evening, and the setting sun sent flares across Levi's vision, blinding him and making him squint, haloing the figure towering over him on the other side of the counter in an almost godly aura. If Levi had been religious, he would have been awestruck. However, he was not, and stood there cupping his hands over his eyes and waiting for his vision to return to him. 

As it turned out, the vision that greeted him was a far better sight than he'd expected. 

The first thing he saw was Sally, looking alive and well and rejuvenated, her Swiffer pad freshly changed and sparklingly white. Her battery indicator was green, and Levi almost cried tears of joy. He reached out to grab for her, but a broad hand grabbed him by the wrist and stayed his hand, and he was left gaping up at none other but Erwin. 

"I will be holding Sally hostage," he announced, and Levi readied himself to sink teeth into the man's hand. The nerve of him! - "Until you agree to accompany me to dinner and a film tonight, after your shift." 

Levi got ready, tensing the muscles in his legs and wondering if it would be particularly hard to vault heroically over the counter and rescue Sally from Erwin's clutches and run off dramatically into the sunset, but Zöe clearly has other plans for him, and pushes him forward while simultaneously divesting him of his black apron and telling Erwin that it was such a coincidence that Levi's shift happened to end right that minute. 

Levi squirmed all the way to Erwin's car, and would have grabbed Sally and made a mad dash for it once they were out of the coffeeshop, but Sally really did have quite a fragile constitution and was not exactly cut out for a life on the run. And besides, it looked as though Erwin had taken decent care of her in the past few days, which raised him a few notches in Levi's opinion. 

Currently, Levi's rating of Erwin was hovering somewhere in the 50% range. Which was much farther up the scale than many other beings. Zöe was currently in the negative, right there below zero with Levi's toaster. It had run rampant in the past few days, clearly determined to take advantage of Levi's upset moods, and had set everything in its immediate vicinity to scorching hot. Levi found this out while ripping a paper towel off the roll. 

Levi plopped himself into the passenger seat of Erwin's Toyota, and a quick glance to his left showed that Erwin looked almost as nervous as Levi presently felt. Being that he'd already clicked the door locks shut and had driven off into traffic, Levi grabbed Sally's handle for reassurance and tried to calm the rapid thudding of his heart. 

* * *

It was a "Date," with a capital D, which could also be used to describe a "Disaster," or alternatively, a "Delightful Time," depending on how one looked at it. The movie had been good, not something Levi would have picked out for himself to watch (he was not really a big fan of Chris Pratt), but he'd rather enjoyed Erwin laughing at the film beside him. He had a deep, rolling laugh that Levi thought sounded suitable for a potential leader of the free world (or, what Captain America would have sounded like had he been told a particularly good joke.)

However, dinner was more than a bit awkward. Levi spent most of the time absentmindedly wondering what people talked about on these sorts of things. So far, their conversation had consisted mostly of rapid-fire question and answers, such as "How old are you?" "Have you been out of the country in the past 7 years?" and "What is your blood type?" 

The last one, Levi felt, was an incredibly relevant question. Erwin had rolled his eyes and told him through a mouthful of chicken that he was B+. Which, coincidentally, matched Levi's, and Levi felt slightly reassured in that, if something horrendous were to happen, he'd be able to have the opportunity to save/be saved by a Chris Evans lookalike. 

He'd pulled out his wallet to pay his half of the bill and had been in the process of sliding his credit card and driver's license out of their slots, when Erwin frantically waved his hand away and told him that it wasn't a problem, knocking Chris Evans' wallet-sized photo fluttering to the ground. Levi was torn momentarily between making a dive for the photograph and forcing a method of payment onto the check, but Erwin reminded him that he'd dropped something, and the thought of Chris Evans' face getting all dirty from carpet that looked like it hadn't been vacuumed in three years set Levi's heart to racing more than it already currently was. 

Once he reemerged from under the tablecloth, the waiter was already walking away with the check, and Erwin was smiling that infuriating smile of his at him. Levi glared at him, but the man seemed incapable of being intimidated. 

Erwin watched as Levi carefully slotted Chris Evans' photo back into his wallet behind his driver's licence, arched an eyebrow at him. 

"A friend of yours?" he asked nonchalantly, having not gotten quite a straight look at the photograph. 

"Er," Levi hemmed and hawed, wondering how to answer the question. "Something like that," he agreed, and Erwin's eyebrows furrowed just the slightest. Levi wondered what he'd said wrong. 

* * *

Erwin sighed heavily as he set in his car to Park in front of Levi's apartment building. 

"Perhaps it's my fault, being that I practically forced you into tonight," he admitted. "But I wouldn't had I known you were already...seeing someone else." 

Levi, who'd been gazing out the window and thinking that perhaps tonight hadn't been quite so bad, gawked at him. "I am?" he asked, completely dumbfounded by this news.

"Well, the person in your wallet, I'm assuming," Erwin said, slumping over the steering wheel, and Levi felt so bad about it that he even went so far as to tug his wallet out of his pocket and wrest his driver's licence from the plastic slot. He held the picture up for Erwin's inspection. 

Erwin looked up halfheartedly, glanced back down at the wheel before suddenly turning back to Levi and clicking on the overhead light. "That's me!" he exclaimed, grabbing the wallet out of Levi's hand and squinting down at the photograph. "Why do you have a picture of me in your wallet?" he asked, looking back at Levi, who was only getting more and more confused by the second. 

"That's not a picture of you!" he protested, but Erwin was already sliding the photograph out of the slit and squinting at it in the car's half-light. 

"This is definitely me," he said after a few moments. "It even has my name written on the back!" 

Levi flushed scarlet, and thought for a half second that he was very likely to pass out from the sudden rush. He would have come up with a retort, but Erwin was already pulling him towards him by the lapels of his jacket, and he opened his mouth to protest, stop, you'll rip it, I'll have you know this is Dior, but his words were lost as Erwin pressed a kiss to his slack mouth. 

"You like me," he said, pulling away and shooting Levi a triumphant grin that Levi could see even in the darkness, "you liiiiiiike me." 

"I definitely don't!" Levi protested, his hand scrabbling around the backseat for Sally. "Don't be an idiot, I don't like you, I don't like you..."

He chanted this without stopping, even as Erwin hopped out, dragged him out of his side of the car, Sally clutched in his limp hands, marched him past the highly-amused receptionist, pressed him into the lift. He kept on repeating himself and his denials, hoping that even as he pressed the button for his floor and limply lifted keys to unlock his flat, that it would come true. 

"I don't like you," he said again, more forcefully, as Erwin pinned him against the inside of his apartment's door, one broad hand wrapping around Levi's wrists and pinning them to the mahogany above his head. 

"I don't like you," he mumbled into a moan, his voice breaking as Erwin nibbled kisses into his neck, leaving a little string of strawberry bruises that Levi couldn't bring himself to care about at the present moment. 

"I don't like you," he protested, even as Erwin's other hand pushed his jacket off his shoulders and slipped under his shirt, fingers creeping across his skin. 

"I don't -" he began, losing his breath halfway through the sentence as Erwin's hand, burning, slid the button of his jeans out of its confines, carefully undid the zip, curled around Levi with a tenderness that had Levi gritting his teeth and throwing his head back into the cradle of Erwin's other hand. He opened his eyes, surprised by the lack of sudden pain, found himself staring up into his eyes. 

"I thought you might do that," Erwin explained, smiling, and Levi opened his mouth again - 

"I know, you don't like me," Erwin said, with a grin, and kissed Levi again. 

* * *

Levi woke up the next morning, aching and irritatingly sticky, to bangs and half-hushed curses emanating from his kitchen. He winced as he sat up, looked down at himself, groaned and flopped back down into the sheets at the vast quantity of strawberry kiss marks littered all over his body. The toaster was certainly a master of self-defence and aggression, he rationalised to himself, so the would-be thief would probably have their hands full. 

"God," Erwin muttered as he burst into the bedroom, carrying a tray of what actually looked like pretty decent toast and other assorted breakfast items. "Has anyone told you your toaster is demonic?" 

Levi rolled onto his side, looked up at Erwin, and stretched out a hand to accept a cup of coffee. 

"And for a self proclaimed professional latte artist slash demigod such as yourself," Erwin continued, the mattress dipping as he climbed onto it, "you ought to be ashamed, only having instant coffee mix in your pantry." Levi would have told him that there would absolutely be no eating in bed, but he'd gone to the trouble of making breakfast (his hands sported several burns that were already starting to blister), and the events of the past few hours already broke several of Levi's rules in regards to himself, his conduct, and his cleanliness. The insides of his thighs were sticky and crusty, and he'd definitely have to wash these sheets today, even though it was a Saturday and Saturdays were not laundry days. 

"Yes, well," Levi said, sipping at his cup of instant coffee and frowning at its bitterness, "one has to have a bit of humility, it would be far too much to put myself with the gods." 

Erwin looked at him incredulously before laughing a bit and offering Levi a piece of perfectly golden toast. 

Through crunches of buttery perfection, Levi studied Erwin out of the corner of his eye, and determined that perhaps rules were worth breaking every once in a while. 

 

 


	6. Espresso Ristretto

Levi made a note to self: It was never a good idea to let Erwin Smith anywhere near his neck, or, at the very least, not to let the man anywhere near his neck until the weather cooled down enough to justify wearing a scarf to work. He'd never gotten so many smirks on the subway before, and he'd made it a point to stare at the grimy grey tiles that adorned the carriage floor and wonder just who'd left that still-smoking cigarette butt in a carriage that was clearly designated 'For Non-Smokers only.' His smoking days were behind him, and though he'd never been one to be opposed to running them down to the filters and tasting the tar thick in the back of his throat, but it just seemed downright rude to drop them all over the place where other people who didn't approve of one's lifestyle might be forced to breathe in the smoky air. 

And it was just downright rude for the other subway goers to gape openmouthed at him and smirk at him and the string of raspberry bruises trailing up and down his neck and collarbone. He considered taking up smoking again for a brief moment in between stations when a particularly irritating woman with a hairstyle that probably dated back to 2002 smiled and nudged her friend, whispering in her ear and arching an eyebrow at Levi. 

That particular morning, Zöe was far too busy marking up some timetables for her precious prokaryotes' feeding schedules, or something else horrifyingly scientific, and only gave him the briefest of acknowledgements when he walked in. 

However, that particular afternoon was not quite as uneventful. 

"You've been attacked by a beast," were Mikasa's first words to him from behind a red scarf that Levi swore she might have been wearing just to spite him that particular day. She had come through the door, toting a book and that fawning turquoise-eyed boy whose name, as Levi quickly learned, was Eren, who just also so happened to be the movie-synopses-are-really-university-level-essays writer. "It's left marks all over your neck." 

Eren peeked out from over Mikasa's shoulder just long enough for Levi to register a few things about him: 

1\. He clearly was not in the habit of combing his hair; tufts of brown hair stuck out all over his head and fell over his eyes, and Levi for the life of him really could not see what Mikasa saw in the boy. 

2\. He was gaping at Levi in awe and perhaps a bit of fascination. 

3\. He was taller than Levi. 

"You have hickeys!" Eren crowed triumphantly, and Levi would have reached over the counter to smack the brat's head down had Erwin not chosen that moment to come in and set the bells above the door jingling merrily. Eren whirled around to confront the new arrival, falling back like a kicked puppy upon laying eyes on Erwin. Clearly, his paper grade had come in significantly less than he'd been hoping, and Levi derived a savage sort of pleasure from this. If the boy were to be held back a semester or two for graduation, that would settle in perfectly with Levi's perception of him as a person. 

Erwin just took a glance out of the corner of his eye at Eren, who pouted and skulked off to the corner, shoulders hunched, to examine the tins of chai spice. He reached out a hand to touch it, and Levi felt his heart start to palpitate furiously, when Erwin cleared his throat and he jumped a good foot or so back. Erwin wasn't even looking at him, and in fact was staring up at the chalkboard menu, but Eren meekly retreated to a corner table far away from the chai spice, and Levi felt the knot in his throat relax. 

"Feel alright?" Erwin asked, looking pointedly at the hickeys dotting his neck. Levi scowled at him and tried to yank the collar of his dress shirt up higher in a vain attempt to hide the marks. Eren was positively goggle-eyed at his table in the corner, gaping at the proceedings that were going on.

"What'll you be having?" Levi asked him, rather rudely, if an observer were to say so. Said observer would also say that Erwin had the nature of a saint, as he was smiling patiently at Levi. 

"Well, I've got quite a lot to do tonight, so if it wouldn't bother you too much, I'd like an Espresso Ristretto, please." 

Levi rolled his eyes, frowning and slapping the cash register with the flat of his palm when it refused to open. After a few well placed attacks and quite a lot of stifled giggles from the corner table, the register chinged open, hitting Levi squarely in the abdomen with the drawer. He frowned deeply, closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to refrain from strangling the nearest inanimate object, and looked up to accept Erwin's (hopefully non-defaced) currency only to find the man's face mere centimeters from his own. He jumped back with a little gasp, as though he'd just been confronted with some long dead Japanese ghost that he'd seen on the television once. 

"Although, I would really rather like to have you instead," Erwin murmured, and Levi forced himself to take another deep breath and extract himself from the oceanic blue of Erwin's eyes. 

He didn't even have to lean over the counter to slap Erwin over the head, and he muttered to himself that he would make it the bitterest thing Erwin had ever tasted, his cheeks flaming, as he turned to make the drink. 

* * *

"What the flaming hell was that about?!" Levi snapped at him once Mikasa had left, her white latte in one hand and Eren hanging off the other. She had set the bells jingling, had turned to acknowledge Levi with a little nod, and had tugged at her scarf almost as if to irritate him even more. Levi thought he might have to revise his opinion of the girl; she was turning out to be rather quite sadistic, and enjoyed taking perverse pleasure in other people's embarrassment. "We're not even a, a thing!" he sputtered, as Erwin was currently towering over him and making him feel quite (enjoyably, though Levi would never admit it) small. Just like a certain actor whose picture was lying somewhere on the floor of Erwin's Toyota might have, if Levi had been even a blip on his radar. 

If Levi was reading the signals right, he was practically the Titanic on Erwin's scope. Or perhaps the iceberg. But the iceberg had remained unnoticed until the boat crashed into it? He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, it was getting far too complicated an analogy for him, and felt Erwin's fingers grasping his chin and tilting his head upwards. 

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure we're a thing," Erwin told him, his eyes twinkling. "I don't usually have intimate relations with people with whom I am not a thing. And you  _do_ carry that picture of me around in your wallet, so clearly you've already thought somewhere in this odd mind of yours that we are, in fact, a thing."

"We're not!" Levi protested, but Erwin was pouting at him like he'd just been told his dog of fourteen years had passed away in the night, and Levi hastened to place an addendum at the end of the sentence: "It's not that I'm opposed to the idea, it's just -"

Erwin's hand pressed gently over his mouth. 

"I have no desire to hear your objections at the present moment, Mr. Ackerman," he said, and Levi felt a delicious shiver running up his spine, ticking off each individual vertebra along the way, at the deep rumble of Erwin's voice. "It's only polite to give the defence some time to formulate their argument. And, unfortunately, I do not have sufficient time today with which to do so." 

Levi pushed his hand away. "So you said," he muttered, turning away from Erwin to wipe down the counters and straighten out the currency in the cash register. "You've got quite a lot to do tonight." 

"Indeed I do," Erwin said, with a sweet smile that Levi felt could probably turn milk into custard. "I'll be taking this," - he took the ristretto, now almost cold, knocked it back in one fluid shot and a grimace - "and I will be on my way." 

Levi pouted after his back, although he'd never admit that he'd been pouting, not over his dead body. Even the allure of the green-and-silver tin of chai spice held no appeal for him at the present moment, and he rubbed absentmindedly at his neck, tracing absentmindedly over each tender splotch and wondering if perhaps it might not be so bad to be a thing with Erwin Smith. 

* * *

Three and a half hours and one terrifying subway ride later (terrifying in the sense that Levi had gotten caught in the evening crowd, all businessmen with huge briefcases that banged into Levi's knees and stomach whenever anyone so much as breathed, and he couldn't help but think of all the germs and communicable diseases that he might be catching at that very moment), Levi trudged past the receptionist and into the lift, watching the floor numbers tick away in little orange lights. 

The hallway before his flat smelled really quite nice, someone roasting some sort of meat, and it was truly unfortunate that that roasty, herby scent was overlaid with the smell of something burning quite badly. He was about to slot his key into the door when he noted that it was just the slightest bit open and that if he just laid a hand on the door and pushed in with a bit of effort, it would swing open. 

He reached into his messenger bag for something, anything, that he might be able to use as a potential weapon against the intruders that were in his flat. He came up with a few neatly folded receipts, a few pens which had run out of ink, and a packet of gum that had been unopened. He grasped his keys firmly in his hand, all the better for raking down someone's face, or taking off a few select body parts if applied with enough force and determination, and pushed open the door. 

The entryway and living room appeared to be untouched, but Levi had watched enough television and Netflix movies to know that the would-be killer was most likely hiding in the bathroom or the shower (or, in one case, the oven, but that was highly unlikely, Levi's oven was rather small and probably growing cobwebs inside from how often it was used), and he crept carefully, quietly, towards the kitchen, from which said delicious (and horrifying) smells were emanating. 

Grabbing an umbrella that he'd never even removed from its sheath, he carefully tiptoed towards his kitchen, handle clutched firmly in hand and ready to fend off any would be assailants who had not already had their hands burnt to a crisp by his demon of a toaster. He held his breath as he hid behind the corner of the wall, mentally steeling his nerves to leap out and defend his livelihood, and took a deep breath before taking a peek into his kitchen. 

He momentarily thought for a moment that perhaps he'd willed Chris Evans into existence in his kitchen, but the man muttered a curse and turned so his face was just the slightest in profile, and Levi would have been lying if he said he was disappointed it was actually Erwin. 

His grasp on the umbrella handle relaxed, and he quietly tiptoed back to the entryway to set the umbrella in its stand, and silently opened the front door and walked out. He rested his forehead against the white wood of the door, looking at the perfectly polished numbers set into the door, and counted to fifteen, taking deep, calming breaths. He slotted his key into the keyhole, turning it and opening the door, so Erwin might have a few moments to finish preparing. 

He slammed the door behind him [something he almost never did, but he wasn't sure if Erwin would hear anything else], and stood in the entryway for a few moments, toeing off his shoes and taking a good thirty seconds to arrange them just so, lined up toe to toe with a seam in the wood floor, before clearing his throat loudly, shrugging out of his jacket and hanging it up on the hook beside the door, and walking to the kitchen. 

Even though he'd known Erwin was there beforehand, it was no less surprising to him to come upon him in the kitchen, strands of blonde hair sticking to his forehead as he furiously mixed something in a bowl. Blue eyes met grey ones from across the kitchen, and Levi wondered absentmindedly what exactly the proper protocol for this sort of situation was. Erwin's hands appeared relatively unscathed, although the toaster's face was glowing an alarming red and Levi sincerely hoped that Erwin had some form of health insurance in the case of an unprecedented explosion. 

"What are you doing in my house?" he asked after a few moments, during which Erwin managed to splatter some thick brown stuff onto his shirt. "I thought you had a lot to do today?" 

"I do. I did," Erwin said, still holding Levi's gaze as more of the thick brown sludge spilled over onto Levi's tile floor. "I was making dinner." 

"It looks like you're spilling dinner on the floor instead of actually making it," Levi pointed out, edging past the rapidly growing puddle towards the pantry, where Sally was fully charged and ready to clean up whatever messes might be made that day. "And how did you get in?" 

"I copied your key when you were still asleep last night."

Levi stopped, stared up at Erwin, who'd somehow managed to get some of the brown stuff in his hair. "That's a crime, you know," he said after a short moment. "I could report you to the police for such infractions." 

Erwin smirked a bit, leaning back against the counter. "I suppose you'd like seeing me in cuffs?" he asked, arching a questioning eyebrow at Levi, whose mouth went dry at the very thought, and he turned back to the task at hand, swishing Sally in neat lines across the floor. 

"Why are you here?" he asked, as Erwin rooted through his cabinets, reaching up into a top shelf and pulling out two ramekins that Levi hadn't seen in probably decades, or at the very least not since he'd moved into the flat. Levi watched with fascination as he poured the contents of the stainless steel bowl into the ramekins and set them in the fridge. "Surely you've got papers to be grading, or something like that."

"Your toaster burnt them," Erwin said cheerfully, pushing the ramekins into the fridge. "I set them down on the counter to read while I was making the roast, and I looked back and they were in flames." He indicated a pile of ash that Levi had not previously noted, sitting in the sink. "It's not a big deal, I'm sure Eren was just summarizing movies again or something of the like. The boy's not the brightest." 

Levi smirked in satisfaction.

"I thought it was obvious; I'm here to defend my thesis," Erwin said, his voice practically a purr, and Levi's eyes followed Erwin's hand as it went up to his throat to loosen the knot of his tie. The effect would have been manyfold stronger, had Erwin's tie not been spattered with the ganache he'd been making. 

"Right," Levi murmured, clearing his throat and looking anywhere but at Erwin. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before in his life; it was like something in one of those chick-flick movies that Levi would never tell a soul that he secretly enjoyed watching on Netflix. A past boyfriend had ridiculed him for that exact thing, when he'd discovered piles of DVDs with pastel covers hidden in shoeboxes underneath Levi's bed. After that, Levi had discovered the joys of Netflix and had even gone so far as to make an alternate account for the little sister he didn't have, who just so happened to be infatuated with chick flicks and romantic comedies. 

"Go sit down or something," Erwin said, nudging him out of his own kitchen. "Dinner will be ready in a bit."

* * *

Levi would never claim to be a wine-drinker, but he did like the taste of it mellowing in his mouth, tucked high into the corners of his cheeks against the flavour of the roast which was, much to Levi's surprise, quite good. He'd never pegged Erwin for the type that could actually cook anything fairly decent. 

It was quite a lovely dinner, very unlike their first dinner, and Levi found himself easing into laughter at Erwin's anecdotes about Eren and his antics, and the rest of his students. Though it wasn't quite like the romantic meals in the movies, complete with lace tablecloth and rose petals and candlelight, Levi found the edges of his vision softening and colouring rosy, found smiles easier and more comfortable. 

He wasn't quite sure, it might have been the wine, or the absolutely phenomenal ganache that Erwin insisted on feeding him spoonful by spoonful, but he thought that perhaps it might be perfectly suitable to be a 'thing' with him. 

* * *

"Wait," Levi murmured, his voice quivering dangerously on the side of a moan as Erwin gently pressed nibbles into the side of his neck. "You're going to leave mar - ah - ks." 

"No more than the ones that are already there, I'm sure," Erwin breathed, but he acquiesced and pulled away from Levi's neck to press a kiss to his mouth, his tongue stroking and twirling rather elegantly around Levi's, pressing itself into the crevices of his mouth, tasting chocolate and wine, and swallowing Levi's moans. He pulled away, leaving Levi gasping for breath, and studied him with eyes that had darkened with desire. "I suppose I'll just have to leave them in other places, won't I?" he said, his gaze predatory as it travelled the length of Levi's body, lingering on his cock, which had already started to stiffen and flush rosy. 

"Wait," Levi whispered, pleading, as strands of Erwin's blonde hair tickled at his stomach as Erwin lowered himself to press kisses to the flushed head of Levi's cock. He grasped handfuls of Erwin's hair, tugging, trying to ground himself as Erwin opened his mouth and took him in, tongue tracing wickedly delicious circles around the tip, dipping lightly into the slit, tasting bitterness and Levi, and Levi was absolutely sure that he was hallucinating, there was no way those whimpers were coming from him, surely not - 

He tossed his head back into his pillows, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, his hips arching beneath Erwin's ministrations, and tried to think of something, anything, to distract him, numbers, Zöe's weapons of biological warfare, how many milliseconds it took to steam milk perfectly, trying desperately not to come, not just yet, it was too perfect of a moment and Levi wished he could stay suspended in time at this particular instance. 

He didn't notice Erwin's thick fingers slotting into him and stretching gently until the tip of Erwin's middle finger brushed against his prostate. He gasped, a shudder racking its way up his spine, and twisted his fingers into Erwin's hair even harder, tugging at the roots. 

"Oh my God," he murmured, "God, I think I'm going to come..." 

"Well," Erwin said, his voice garbled from around Levi's aching flesh, and Levi risked a glance downwards to see Erwin's mouth stretched wide across his skin, deep blue eyes staring up at him, hands pressing his hips down into the covers, thumbs skirting along the hollows of skin stretched taut across his hipbones. He almost came from the sight alone. "You can just call me Erwin," Erwin said, his eyes teasing, and Levi wanted to slap him, but at that moment he did something particularly dexterous with his tongue and pressed a third finger into Levi, and Levi cried out, his voice breaking as his hips struggled up against Erwin's hands, spilling into his mouth. 

When he opened his eyes again, his vision hazy, he looked down to find Erwin, lips smudged silvery, trailing kisses up his inner thighs, worrying milky skin between his teeth and pulling off with soft sucking pops that were sure to leave red circles. 

"Surely no one's going to see these," he said, and Levi swallowed roughly. "Just me, hopefully," Erwin continued, looking up at Levi from between his legs, and Levi whined something unintelligible as Erwin pressed a soft kiss to the underside of his now-oversensitive cock. Something nudged against the side of Levi's ankle, something velvety hot, and Levi nudged it back, experimentally, watching as Erwin's eyes fluttered closed for just the quickest of moments before opening again and burning Levi to the core. 

"I could...take care of that for you, if you want," Levi murmured, though he'd never been much of a blowjob-giver. He supposed he could let that slide, though, due to extenuating circumstances...

"Can I put it inside?" Erwin asked, his palms flat against Levi's inner thighs and pushing them apart gently. 

"You didn't ask the other day," Levi grumbled, but Erwin wasn't waiting for an answer and Levi felt himself slowly stretching open, wider, wider, impossibly wider, until the head slipped in and he lost his breath in a shuddering moan. "Hey, I wasn't read -" His mouth fell open in a silent whine as Erwin slid the rest of the way in, seating himself burning and deep inside Levi, his hips twitching minutely, his jaw clenched as though he was restraining himself to the best of his abilities. 

"Christ, you're so hot inside," Erwin murmured, his hips rolling forward and grinding into Levi's prostate. Levi shuddered, his hands reaching up of their own accord and clamping over Erwin's shoulders. "Like a glove." 

"This was your plan the whole time," Levi muttered, but he couldn't deny the fact that, with every thrust, with every slow roll of his hips, he was starting to get hard again. He couldn't recall the last time he'd been able to do that; probably some time during his adolescence. "Had a lot of things to do, my ass." 

"Well, yes, that was on the list," Erwin said, unfazed, as his hips slammed in particularly deliciously, and Levi choked on a scream. It was hard to believe, but there was a knot of heat sparking in the pit of his stomach again, tightening and tensing and growing in enormity with every thrust. "You're close again." 

Levi opened his mouth to snap at him, yes, he was close again, thank you very much, he certainly was quite the observer, wasn't he, but Erwin silenced him by reaching a hand down and wrapping a hand around Levi's cock, thumb worrying at the weeping head, while his other hand took one of Levi's off his shoulders and laced their fingers together, pinning it down to the mattress to Levi's side. Erwin leaned down, his breath ghosting along Levi's lips, and Levi found his free hand unconsciously travelling to the back of Erwin's head, tangling itself in the dark strands there, pressing him down close into a kiss. 

Levi could swear Erwin was smiling against his mouth, the bastard, as he rocked his hips forward, once, twice, thrice, and spilled himself into Levi; the blooming warmth inside him and the way Erwin's hand was teasing at the head of his cock had Levi coming within seconds, Erwin swallowing his breathless cry. 

Erwin rolled off him a few moments later, resting for a few moments before getting out of bed and puttering about in the bathroom for a few moments while Levi was trying to summon enough energy to stand up and have a shower. His legs felt rather unstable, and he didn't trust them to carry him the short distance to his bathroom without giving out like jelly halfway through. He was just taking another deep breath and trying to muster the stamina for it, when Erwin returned, a damp washcloth in his hand, and began to wipe Levi down, paying special attention to his hips and thighs. 

After he'd deemed Levi acceptably clean (Levi personally still felt a bit sticky), he discarded the washcloth on the nightstand and crawled back into bed beside him, his arms casually slipping around Levi's waist and shoulders, and Levi thought that it really did feel quite natural, the way he fit into the hollow of Erwin's body, his head tucked into the crook of Erwin's neck. 

"I'll do your sheets later," Erwin yawned, and Levi could feel the syllables rumbling through his chest. "Unless you've got some special ritual for your washing machine, like counting out the soap flakes or whatever for Martha, I'm still confused as to why you give name tags to your appliances, that's really not normal behaviour..."

Erwin's voice trailed off, and Levi smiled sleepily, pressing a tiny kiss to the hollow of Erwin's throat before he, too, fell asleep, thinking that perhaps Erwin's proposal was quite fine indeed.

 

 


	7. Black Tie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Black Tie is a traditional Thai iced tea, a spicy and sweet mixture of chilled black tea, orange blossom water, star anise, crushed tamarind, sugar and condensed milk or cream, with a double shot of espresso. From Wikipedia.

Levi would have been lying if he'd said that he was irked by the fact that Erwin's dress shirts and socks and boxers slowly began to make appearances with ever increasing frequency in his laundry basket. He would have been lying if he said that he was irritated to wake up in the mornings and have to move a pair of Erwin's dress slacks from their position on a hanger hooked over the shower rod so that he could take a quick bath before going to work. And Levi would definitely have been lying if he'd said that he didn't particularly like waking up to a heavy arm slung over him and Erwin's breaths deep and slow and even against the top of his head. 

He was a bit hesitant to put any labels on whatever relationship he and Erwin were currently engaged in, but, from an outsider's perspective looking in, it was quite obvious to even the untrained eye that Levi Ackerman and Erwin Smith were most definitely an item. 

Really, the only thing that presently irritated Levi about (dare he say it? his boyfriend) Erwin Smith was that the man was depraved. With a capital D.

He supposed it had something to do with the fact that Erwin was, at the most simplified level, a schoolteacher and was probably all buttoned up and sexually repressed from all those years teaching university writing courses in the general vicinity of dozens of walking cesspools of hormones without any way to express himself. After all, it wasn't like Erwin could go to bars and nightclubs or anything of the sort, unless he was willing to commute over to the next city. (Levi had spent quite a few years of his life in a phase reading about teacher-student relationships. Had one been an outsider looking in, one might have been tempted to say that Levi had a bit of a kink for those sorts of things. Levi would have smacked one straight in the mouth and gone away, fuming, and trying to quell the thoughts of Erwin with a ruler in hand.)

But Erwin seemed to want sex, all the bloody time, and Levi was frankly a bit sore and a bit tired and would much rather have a quiet night at home ordering Chinese take-out or pizza and watching Netflix on his laptop or something. Maybe a casual handjob. But Erwin had this deep-set fascination with sticking things where they normally wouldn't belong that Levi felt sure stemmed from some unremembered trauma in his childhood. 

The topic consumed him throughout his days at the coffee shop as he absentmindedly mixed lattes and espresso shots and wondered how to broach the topic to Erwin. He did not seem like the type of man who would take kindly to having his daily habits disrupted. And sex with Erwin was becoming quite a habit. In the mornings, still wet and shaking open from the night before (because no matter what Erwin said, his standards of hygiene were nowhere up to par with Levi's); in the afternoons if Levi and Erwin had free time and had gotten off work early, dusky afternoon light filtering over their bodies and entwined limbs and painting them sunshine golden, like Renaissance artwork; in the evenings (everywhere, in the shower, in bed, on the couch while absentmindedly flipping through television channels and fingers still a little greased from pizza or whatever other food Erwin had made/ordered that night). 

"Hey, Erwin, so I've been thinking, I'd rather not have sex tonight if that's alright with you." 

He couldn't really imagine that going over too well. Erwin would be incredibly nice about the whole thing, as he usually was about concerning issues like the state of the economy and the rising costs of petrol, but he would probably give Levi puppy looks and pouts when he thought Levi wasn't looking but which Levi would of course see anyway out of the corner of his eye. And Levi really was not a man who could handle that level of guilt trip; it was not a skill that he'd ever acquired and which his mother and elementary school classmates had ruthlessly abused. 

So that was out. 

He popped open another carton of vanilla soy milk and absentmindedly sucked at the pearly droplet on his thumb, which had him thinking about another moment in time when Erwin had popped his thumb into his mouth and looked up at him from under lidded eyes while he smirked and rolled his tongue over the pad of Levi's thumb. A shudder had run down Levi's spine and pooled in the pit of his stomach, even though he'd just come, and Erwin had smiled at him in that infuriating manner of his. 

He took his lunch break, eating an egg salad sandwich that Erwin had packed for him that morning, leaving it in a paper sack in the refrigerator with a little note and a smiley face. It had made Levi's heart flutter in a way that would ordinarily have him concerned about the high blood pressure that ran in his family but instead made him feel all warm and tingly inside. It was almost disgusting, the way he found that he could suddenly relate to all those sappy romcoms that were still in a shoebox under his bed. He swore the bluebirds could talk to him and chirped cheerfully every morning, and that all the people on the subway on his way to work were cordial and maintained appropriate levels of distance in order to respect each other's personal space, and Erwin was one of the few people Levi had dated in the last century that actually did the thing with the tube of toothpaste where one rolled it up as one went along instead of just squeezing it in the middle like undisciplined people might have. 

"Erwin, I'm really tired, do you think we can just turn in early tonight?"

Levi was unsure when it had turned from "I" to "we," but he would be lying if he said he felt no different about saying it. 'We' just had that sort of fuzzy connotation associated with it that Levi secretly, absolutely, wholeheartedly adored. And, at any rate, he wasn't sure how well Erwin would take it; probably some teasing about him being an old man (though Levi knew for a fact that he was a few years younger than him, he'd taken a peek at Erwin's driver's licence while the man was in the shower one time) before an almost-silent sigh and an acquiescence that would have Levi flooded with guilt. 

Levi decided that perhaps he would mention it in a series of subtle clues and hints and nudges. Erwin couldn't possibly be that dense, could he?

* * *

Unfortunately, it turned out that Erwin was exactly that dense, and Levi found himself trying to squirm out from underneath Erwin's body where he was pinning him to the bed. 

"Erwin," he hissed from between his teeth, sure that Erwin was inadvertently squashing his ribs, "get off, come on, get off." 

Erwin pushed himself up, looking down at Levi with confusion, and Levi felt incredibly bad about the whole thing but really he wasn't exactly in the mood and was a bit sore and a whole bundle of other reasons that he couldn't think to list of right now. "What is it?" Erwin asked, arching a thick brow at Levi, who blushed and looked somewhere off to the side. 

"Listen," Levi said, mustering all his courage, "I...I'm not up for this tonight. Sorry."

As he'd expected, Erwin did an almost-silent sigh that was just loud enough for Levi to hear if he applied himself, and honest-to-God pouted before rolling off of Levi with a little sad smile and assuring him that of course it was okay, he was kind of tired himself, and not to worry about it, that they most definitely wouldn't have sex again until Levi was ready for it. 

Levi waited until Erwin's breaths eased out steady and deep and even before lying awake and staring at the popcorn stucco ceiling, turning the exchange over and over in his mind. 

* * *

True to his word, Erwin spent the next few days limiting his physical contact with Levi to a bare minimum, tiny chaste kisses that left Levi feeling particularly prudish, the occasional arm slung over his shoulder while they sat on the couch in Levi's flat and watched television, curled up absentmindedly around Levi when he was sleeping in Levi's bed (and Levi really would need to look into buying a bigger bed or something, because he found himself squished up between the wall and Erwin night after night after night. 

And Levi would have been lying if he'd said that it was positively infuriating, having Erwin spoon him every night, a firm hand pressed up against his stomach and radiating heat through his hips. 

* * *

By about the fifth day, Levi was going insane. There was absolutely no way he could live for such a short time with such an excess of a good thing (namely, Erwin's status as Levi's personal heater and the sex, obviously, though the last point Levi would never admit, not in a million years), only to have it all taken away and sleeping not even an inch apart from him. Captain America would never have done anything of the sort, Levi concluded to himself as he stared at the wall and tried to ignore the warming itch in the pit of his stomach as Erwin rolled over in his sleep and wrapped an arm around Levi's waist, tugging him closer. 

* * *

"Oi," Levi hissed, digging an elbow into Erwin's ribs as he all but smothered him with a thick forearm. "Budge over a bit, it  _is_ a queen-sized bed, not a twin." 

Erwin mumbled something unintelligible, sending a shiver up Levi's spine. 

"And it's time for you to get up, anyway, you've got work," Levi added. It was his day off, and he fully intended to make the most of it; the tiles in the kitchen had been looking a bit greasy slick lately, courtesy no doubt of Erwin's culinary capabilities. 

"Dun wanna go to work," Erwin murmured, and Levi's heart skipped a beat or ten as Erwin buried his face in the top of Levi's head and took a few deep breaths. "Hate grading essays, should've listened to my mum and been an engineer instead, got a faculty dinner tonight, boring, boring, boooring." 

"You've got a dinner tonight?" Levi asked. This was the first time he'd heard about it. "You didn't tell me. I was going to make ravioli." Levi was rather proud of his ravioli; it was an old family recipe that supposedly had been passed down through the ages. 

"'orry," Erwin muttered through a mouthful of Levi's hair. "Slipped my mind, I guess." 

Levi would never tell anyone, but at that moment in time he was pouting at the wall and wondering if perhaps it wasn't time for a bit of personal indulgence. 

* * *

Levi allowed himself a good hour to laze around in bed after Erwin had already left (he'd leaned over and pecked Levi on the forehead affectionately, his dark blue and silver striped tie brushing against Levi's cheek, and Levi didn't subscribe to any personal religion, but he felt sure it was some sort of divine intervention that had Erwin looking particularly dashing that day in a dark suit that nipped in at the waist. Or perhaps it was just the faculty dinner.). He hummed to himself when he got up, it was a relatively mild-mannered day, grey and cloudy outside with a slight nip in the air that indicated that fall might be starting soon. Sally had a full charge in her battery pack, and Levi spent the better half of his morning swishing her around his flat, cleaning up the tiles in the kitchen and the hardwood planks everywhere else. 

In the afternoon, he washed the sheets and all of their laundry (Erwin seemed to generate dirty clothes at the speed of sound). He went to the grocery store, bought some milk and bread and those crackers that Erwin liked, vaguely wondering at the till as he rummaged through his pockets for spare change, how exactly he knew that. 

There was nothing on television that evening except old SNL reruns, and after Levi had already eaten a lonely dinner at his kitchen table, he found his thoughts drawn towards Erwin and what he was doing at his faculty dinner. Was he having a good time? What was he eating? Was he thinking about Levi? This last question was a rather pressing one, and the more Levi considered it, the closer and closer he found his hand straying towards the zip of his jeans. Well, Erwin wouldn't care, right? Levi rationalised to himself as the zipper crept down, seemingly of its own accord. He had some faculty dinner to attend to in that dark black-tie suit of his and whatever divine intervention existed probably had blessed Erwin with those broad shoulders and that nipped waist and the ability to pull off a suit - a man's suit - deliciously well. 

Levi sighed as he wrapped a hand around himself; it felt a bit strange, when one took into consideration the events that had transpired over the past few weeks, to be doing this again. He bit his lip as he stroked upwards, worried at the head with the pad of his thumb, sweeping up the pearlescent liquid that had started to bead at the tip. It was alright, he thought to himself, as he sighed, the edges of a whimper creeping into his voice. It wasn't great, but it was alright. It didn't feel nearly the same, not with some part of Erwin stretching him out and filling him up and pressing into his insides, and he clenched vacantly around empty space as he thought about it. 

He glanced at the clock on the DVD player underneath his television. It was only 9:33 PM, and Erwin showed no signs of coming back any time soon (NOT, Levi thought, that he was obligated to, obviously he had his own flat or university housing or whatever, and Levi certainly wasn't going to hold him accountable for anything). He shrugged to himself, and got up and manoeuvred to the bed, which currently smelled like lavender and clean linen, and Levi nuzzled his nose into the cotton pillowcases as he shrugged out of his jeans, depositing them unceremoniously in a pile on the side that he would most definitely be getting to folding around immediately after this activity was over. He pulled his laptop over to rest on Erwin's pillow (when had he started thinking of that pillow as Erwin's?) and opened it to a Chris Evans photoshoot shortly after he'd filmed the first Captain America and began to stroke again. 

Even Chris Evans had lost his lustre. Levi quickly found himself transposing some of Erwin's features onto Chris's face, Erwin's eyes were just that slightly darker shade of blue, and he definitely had a bit of a stronger jawline, and those eyebrows, one definitely couldn't be forgetting about those. 

Levi currently had three fingers buried inside himself and a hand wrapped around his achingly hard cock when he heard the front door slam shut, and before he could even attempt to compose himself, Erwin was in the bedroom, smelling vaguely of smoke and aftershave. 

Erwin cocked one of those deliciously thick eyebrows at him, and Levi didn't really have any explanation for what was going on, and he pulsed in his right hand as his mouth fell open and he gaped up at Erwin, whose tie was still knotted tightly at his neck and whose suit jacket was shining slightly silky in the dim light of the room. 

"I see you've been having a spot of fun without me," Erwin murmured, his voice husky, and Levi whined high in his throat as Erwin took firm hold of his left wrist and tugged his fingers unceremoniously out of himself. "You're close already," he whispered into Levi's ear, and a shudder wracked its way up Levi's spine, because God, he was right, and Erwin's hand was wrapping around him now, fingers entwined with Levi's, heat and slick and shuddery, and Levi's hips rocked forward, quicker, quicker, his breath catching in his throat - 

Erwin stopped right as Levi was precisely a tenth of a stroke away from coming. 

"What the hell, Erwin?" Levi hissed, tears pricking in the corners of his eyes as he tried to rock further into Erwin's hand, but the man remained inflexible. 

"Who's that?" Erwin asked, tilting his head towards Levi's laptop, which was still open on Erwin's pillow (Levi really had to stop referring to it as Erwin's pillow). "He looks like me." 

"That's - ah - that's Captain America," Levi explained, worrying his lip between his teeth and attempting to buck into Erwin's hand. Erwin was having none of it. "He's my type."

Erwin smirked at him, and even through the darkness Levi could see his expression perfectly well. "Yes, I'm well aware of what your type is, Levi," Erwin said, getting onto the bed, and Levi could feel something warm and hard and silk rubbing up against his upper thighs. 

"You're going to get your slacks dirty," Levi murmured absentmindedly, but Erwin had already positioned himself at Levi's entrance and had started prodding forward with mild insistence. "And you're going to have to get your suit dry cleaned, you really can't wash that, and, and, oh -"

Erwin pressed in relatively unceremoniously, and Levi had his mouth half opened around a comment regarding Erwin's impatience when the head of Erwin's cock ground directly into his prostate and he lost his train of thought in a half-whimper, half-sob that had Erwin's fingers clenching into his hips that would probably stain bruises across the planes of his hips in the morning. 

"Christ, you're tight," Erwin hissed, biting at the back of Levi's neck and worrying a patch of skin between his teeth. "Maybe we should take breaks more often." 

He began to withdraw a bit, and Levi clamped down furiously around him, on the brink of tears. He was too close, Erwin couldn't possibly stop now, that would be cruel and unnecessary torture. 

"No," he sobbed, his voice almost breaking into a wail, "please don't, please keep going, please, please, please, Erwin, I  _need_ it -"

Erwin flipped him over unceremoniously so Levi was facing him, one hand pressed flat against Levi's stomach, the other hurriedly undoing the Windsor knot of his tie. It was like something out of a porn video, and Levi found his mouth going dry as Erwin hastily unbuttoned the top two buttons of his white shirt, his suit still buttoned up and nipped in at the waist. At this particular moment, Levi was feeling very much Anastasia Steele, though he would never ever profess to ever reading, or so much as picking up, a copy of 50 Shades of Grey. Besides, he'd seen the trailers for the upcoming movie, and Erwin was most definitely hotter than the actor who was supposed to be playing Christian Grey. 

"I know," Erwin said, smiling sweetly down at Levi, and Levi could have punched him, he was infuriating, but then Erwin was slotting himself back into Levi again and it was so hot and quite possibly the best thing Levi had ever felt, a bit of burn and drag against his inner walls as Erwin stretched him out to bursting again, unrestricted pleasure as every ridge and vein of Erwin's cock ground up tight against his prostate, setting his thighs quivering and falling slack, open, around the silk of Erwin's suit jacket. 

All it took was one look through teary eyes up at Erwin, whose hands were placed firmly on the insides of Levi's thighs and holding them wide open, biting at his lower lip and strands of blonde hair falling sweaty over his forehead, and he was wearing a  _suit_ for Christ's sake, and Levi hadn't even known he'd had this kind of kink, but God, he couldn't, he was going to ruin Erwin's clothes, but he just really couldn't bring himself to stop. Another three thrusts afterwards, Levi's mouth opened around a silent scream as he strained against Erwin's hands, trying desperately to wrap his legs around his waist and bring him closer, closer, closer, his cock jerking as he came untouched, spilling pearly white all across the front of Erwin's jacket. 

Erwin's fingers dug into Levi's thighs as he rutted forward, grinding himself directly against Levi's bottom as he spilled himself inside of Levi, setting a blooming warmth through the pit of Levi's stomach that had him whimpering softly even as Erwin pulled out and collapsed beside him, closing Levi's laptop on Chris Evans's smiling face and pushing it off of his pillow (it really wasn't his, Levi had bought that pillow with his own salary, so theoretically it was...his). 

"Hey, you," Erwin said, smiling lazily at him as he cracked open an eye to look at Levi. "Had a good night?"

Levi couldn't help it. He laughed. "It got better," he said, smiling as Erwin rolled over and wrapped him in his arms, silk rubbing up against skin. "Your suit is ruined." 

"Mm," Erwin murmured, pressing Eskimo kisses into the nape of Levi's neck. "I think I can deal with that."

Levi fell asleep almost instantly that night, a smile on his face. 

 

 


	8. Dark Roast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've been gone for so long! I hope to make more frequent updates in the future.

Levi had gone through his fair share of undergraduate experiences, and going clubbing was not exactly an unfamiliar experience. It had, however, been ages since Levi had actually physically been into a club, and he stamped his feet, alternating between rubbing his hands up and down his arms and blowing on his fingertips to keep them warm. Erwin, in a moment of foresight, had actually tossed a coat of Levi's into his car before coming to pick Levi up from work. However, Erwin's foresight could only carry him so far (he was actually scheduled to get eyeglasses at the end of the year, but had put off seeing his optometrist because of some deep-seated fear about glasses correlating to old age and whatnot. Levi had only managed to convince him to go once Erwin nearly took off a finger chopping eggplant, and had given him a few stern reminders about how university health insurance also extended to faculty), and he'd only brought one of Levi's light coats, completely unsuitable for the current weather conditions. Levi frowned and hugged himself tighter, his teeth chattering in his skull, vaguely wishing he'd accepted Erwin's earlier offer to zip him up inside his jacket too.  

Unlike many of his other undergraduate clubbing experiences, Levi didn't feel his heart start to race as they approached the front of the entry line, didn't feel any sense of intimidation from the stocky bouncer standing just to the side of the red velvet rope. Neon lights from the overhead decals splashed across the people's faces and turned them shades of blue and orange and pink, like an acid trip. He could feel the vibrations from the thumping bass inside spilling through his body, and he shuddered as a particularly delicious one spiked up through his insides. Erwin chuckled behind him, and Levi turned to first shoot a glare up at those twinkling blue eyes before directing his sight towards Erwin's hand, stuffed into his parka pocket, thumb probably fiddling with the button of a tiny white remote that Levi had alternately cursed and praised over the past few days. 

More cursing than praising. Erwin was nothing if not a tease. 

"Just wanted to remind you of it," Erwin said, the grin on his face refusing to be wiped off. "It might get lost in all the excitement." 

Levi frowned at him as the line advanced forward and the buzzing stopped. It was inaudible over the pounding baseline, and Levi really was getting older, it was already starting to give him a headache, but that might have been a combination of the pre-gaming they'd done in the 7-11 around the corner, also something Levi hadn't done since his late teens/early twenties, taking pulls of bad whiskey from cheap glass bottles in the corner of a convenience store by the hot dogs, rotating slowly, sweaty in their glass cases. 

"You look very nice, have I told you?" Erwin asked, nudging Levi forward where the bouncer held out his hand impatiently for his ID card. Levi bit back a laugh. He'd reached the age where this sort of demand was both flattering and insulting at the same time, and he hid a smile behind the corner of his hand as he handed over his driver's licence to be read under the scanner. 

Erwin, of course, was let through without even the slightest hint of the bouncer wanting to ask for his ID card. Levi grumbled something about discrimination the entire way in, but a quick nudge of the remote's controls had him biting the inside of his cheek and spilling through the doorway with a little flurry of snow and not even a single comment about how sticky the floor was under the soles of his shoes.

* * *

It had been a horrible plan all along, Levi thought, the flashing lights from the stage glazing across his eyes and spilling into his ears like so many little riffs and notes. He swore he could see the music, pulsing across the walls and turning the club into a budding, breathing organism, the people gyrating and swaying all around him a multitude of cells and organs, like a giant heart. He could taste the tunes the DJ was spinning, Avicii like sugar floss across his teeth, Zedd bursting like soap bubbles on his tongue, and of course there was that absolutely delectable whirring inside him that had him tossing his head back and gasping at all the beautiful people dancing across the ceiling, his inhalation lost amidst the music and the shouting and the laughter. 

He watched through a fog as the mirror-Erwin reached across the table, wrapping his fingers around mirror-Levi's, turning his hand over to press a thumb against the pulse point on his wrist. Levi watched, dazed, swallowed roughly at the heat of Erwin's fingers wrapped around his skin, his face all bright and flushed, eyes starry, and Levi swore in that instant that maybe the entire universe was contained in this one room, and that he'd never felt more happy in his life - 

An insistent pressure in his lower abdomen reminded him very clearly that, as much as he would like to believe it, he wasn't actually a god, or a demigod, not even a Roman one, and the Rum and Cokes were surely but certainly living on borrowed time and wished to be returned to their original owners now. He stood up, shakily, giggling at the sticky pool of soda his palm landed into as he slammed it down onto the table in an attempt to maintain his balance, and Erwin's smile had never looked more appealing, the barely-there scruff of five o'clock shadow (and why was it called that? Levi wondered, wasn't seven o'clock much more appropriate?) as the man stood up, towering over him and gathering him in his arms. 

Levi nearly tripped over his own feet, grasping at the back of Erwin's dress shirt and giggling helplessly into the broad gap between his shoulder blades as Erwin dragged him towards the bathroom. 

* * *

Levi had had many undergraduate experiences, but this certainly hadn't been one of them. 

Erwin had backed him into a stall, and the normal Levi would have been frantic to get out, muttering something desperately about close quarters and the sanitary conditions of the stall (rather bad, to be honest, spilt beer puddling in a corner, toilet paper strewn every which way, and Levi could STILL hear the music inside the bathroom, racing like his heart). However, the Levi with four Rum and Cokes recently evicted from his body had very different ideas, and acquiesced far too readily when Erwin pressed him against the stall door, sealing his mouth over Levi's. This Levi accepted the kiss, returned it with a very enthusiastic one of his own, and even went so far as to wrap a leg around Erwin's waist in a clumsy effort to get them closer together. 

"Lovely," Erwin whispered, tracing a finger down Levi's cheek, and Levi giggled hysterically at this for reasons even he couldn't fathom, his head tilting crazily to the side, lids heavy, pressing his cheek hard into Erwin's palm. And it might not even have been 'lovely,' Levi wasn't much skilled at reading lips, it might have been 'chubby,' or 'bubbly,' or any sort of thing like that. He preferred to think it was 'lovely,' though. 

Erwin reached down, fiddled with something below, Levi's head couldn't tilt that far, he thought he would surely fall over if he tried, but before he could say anything or ask anything, Erwin had him in hand, a gentle stroke, comforting fingers wrapped around velvet skin. 

Levi laughed, thinking this was quite possibly the best dream he'd ever had, and pressed a moan into the crook of his arm as Erwin flicked on the vibrator inside him and began to stroke in tandem. 

It was, unfortunately, at that very moment that the lock on the stall door decided to stop performing its function, allowing the door to swing open on its hinges with the next shuddery shiver of Levi's hips. It was also, unfortunately, at that very moment that Erwin looked up from his current activity and met sea green eyes in the cracked bathroom mirror. 

* * *

"You shoulda given 'im the ole one-two," Levi said, giggly still, as he leaned on Erwin's arm, all safely zipped up and dressed and clearly unaffected by their recent activities. Erwin couldn't help but smile fondly at him, ruffling inky hair as Levi wrapped an arm around Erwin's waist, letting his head rest against Erwin's shoulder while Erwin navigated them to the car. Levi's mouth was sweet as he leaned forward, pressing a sloppy, open mouthed kiss to Erwin's face that barely managed to graze the corner of Erwin's mouth as Erwin buckled him into the passenger seat. "Shoulda failed him out of your class, that would teach him," Levi said, laughing with mirth. Erwin tamped the smile down, remembering Eren's look of terror as he was caught, quite literally, with his dick in his hand, at a club that he was definitely not supposed to be at, the boy was underage if he was a day, and one stern look from Erwin had been enough to cow the poor boy into submission.

"Enough, Levi, I'm sure Eren's scared enough," Erwin chided him gently, smiling as he backed out of his parking spot, windshield wipers thwapping across the glass to remove the small drifts of snow that had gathered there. Levi curled up in the passenger seat, tucking his feet underneath him, Converse sneakers neatly lined up on the floor mat. "If I failed Eren, I'd probably have to fail Mikasa, too, she's probably in there with him. You seem to tolerate Mikasa." 

"She's too smart for him," Levi observed, examining his nails underneath the passing lamps. "Eren's rather stupid."

Erwin smiled fondly over at Levi, whose head had slumped against the glass window in a doze. He reached over into Levi's lap, wrapped a hand around Levi's slack fingers, grinning as Levi squeezed back a bit in return. 

* * *

"Get up, we're home," Erwin murmured, crouching by the passenger side of his car, shaking Levi gently. Levi's head rolled easily back and forth, eyes remaining stubbornly closed. "Christ, you're kidding me," Erwin said, smiling now that Levi wasn't around to see. He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "I suppose I can't let you freeze to death, that would be cruel and unusual." 

Erwin carefully maneuvered Levi into his arms, adjusting his head to rest against his shoulder as he shut the car door with his hip. 

Levi smirked against the flannel of Erwin's shirt as he allowed himself to be carried inside and tucked into bed. 

* * *

Of all the undergraduate experiences he'd had, Levi was sure this was quite possibly one of the worst he'd ever had. He knelt in front of his porcelain toilet, which he'd named Gertrude, heaving up the contents of his stomach from the night before - what had he had that was pink? Surely that wasn't healthy, he'd have to look on WebMD later or something, but the last time he'd done that it had told him he had ovarian cancer, and Levi was fairly sure that he didn't have ovaries. It certainly didn't help that Erwin was dancing around the kitchen merrily, cooking an omelette that Levi was certain he would not be able to eat, and he swore he could still hear the bass from last night pounding behind his eyes as he winced as Erwin banged a pan against something in his kitchen. 

A few moments after the banging stopped, Erwin tapped on the bathroom door. Levi was seized by a sudden desire to strangle Erwin for being so merry. 

"Levi? Do you want breakfast?" Erwin asked through the door, and just the thought of that sent Levi leaning over Gertrude again. "I'll take that as a no." 

Levi exited the bathroom a few minutes later, gratefully accepting the cup of coffee that Erwin pressed into his hand and avoiding even so much as glancing at the plate of fluffy eggs in front of Erwin. He sipped his dark roast, closing his eyes as the pounding in his skull started to subside, ever so gradually. 

"How much do you remember of last night?" Erwin asked through a mouthful of eggs. Levi pointedly avoided looking at the flecks of egg that littered his table. "You were pretty out of it. I had to carry you in." 

"I remember the part about Eren being in the bathroom," Levi said thoughtfully. "And I personally cannot believe you accosted me in the bathroom of a nightclub. Of all the places you wanted to try exhibitionism, it had to be there?" 

Erwin smiled guiltily. "It seemed like a good idea at the time." 

Levi rolled his eyes. "Perhaps next time you can accost me in our bathroom instead," with a nod towards the next room, "it would be much more convenient and 100% Eren-free." 

Erwin couldn't stifle his laugh this time. 

 

 

 

 

 


	9. Mr./Mrs. Coffee

Erwin had, through some miracles and probably a fair amount of divine intervention or satanic rituals (or a combination of both), managed to tame Levi’s toaster into submission (Levi had long ago dubbed it Lucifer after it had burnt the webbing between his thumb and forefinger the very first weekend it had been in his possession). Now Lucifer spat out heaps of perfectly golden toast, not a single crusty crumb burnt.

Unfortunately, while Erwin possessed some uncanny knack for calming the impetuous and evil natures of demonic toasters, he was not as skilled around coffeemakers. Julie, as Levi had named his Mr. Coffee (Mrs. Coffee?) had succumbed that morning, perhaps through some failure of the electrical outlet or perhaps the strain being even in Lucifer’s general vicinity had put on her fragile system, and she had just burst into flames when Erwin attempted to make even so much as a cup of Don Francisco. Now Levi’s flat currently smelt like cremated coffee filter, burnt vanilla hazelnut coffee grounds, and the ashes of Eren Jaeger’s latest paper, which Erwin had blearily set down on Julie’s lid while he puttered to the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth while the coffee was brewing. He swept the ashes into Levi’s sink with a grimace, and privately resolved to just generously give the boy a B. Unbeknownst to Erwin, said latest paper was a verbatim copy of the second episode of the US version of The Office, a show that eren had found himself hopelessly fascinated by in the past few weeks. 

Levi padded out of the bedroom, a loose shirt hanging off one shoulder, rubbing his eyes while he yawned and blinked, looking for the most part like a very grumpy, ruffled owl.

“What exactly died in here?” he asked after a moment, and Erwin had no other choice but to step aside and present Levi with Julie’s still smoldering carcass. Levi blinked at it for a few seconds before pouting, and Erwin had the good graces to look ashamed.

“I’m afraid Julie has expired,” Erwin explained, “but rest assured,” he hastened on, seeing Levi’s already moody face turn positively stormy, “she died for a good cause.”

“And what cause was that?” Levi asked, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring in Erwin’s general direction.

“She managed to eliminate Eren’s latest monstrosity from the world,” Erwin said, and Levi arched a thin eyebrow at him before laughing, a sound that put a silly smile on Erwin’s face and had Lucifer dinging out two slices of golden toast. 

They ate the toast at the kitchen table, one of Levi’s feet hooking over Erwin’s ankle as crumbs spilled across the tabletop and they drank steaming mugs of chai tea. It was positively domestic, and Erwin would be lying if he said he didn’t absolutely enjoy it as he pressed a kiss into Levi’s still-ruffled hair.

He headed off to work at the university with crumbs of toast spotting his tie and a wide grin on his face that had other commuters on the expressway expressly avoiding him, fearing that perhaps a madman was in their midst. There was absolutely no way any sane, rational person could be that happy on an early Monday morning, they reasoned. He must be positively insane.

* * *

 

Erwin was in the middle of a lecture on rhetorical features and their effectiveness in writing articles and essays when the classroom door opened with a quiet creaking. Eren, who was dozing off somewhere in the back, startled and jumped up with a shout that undoubtedly disrupted some other classes in the building, knocking over Mikasa’s latte and assuming a clumsy karate pose to attack the would be offender. Mikasa whacked him over the head, and Erwin looked beyond the flurry of activity to identify the intruder.

Levi was wearing a look of mild surprise and disgust as he edged his way carefully around the puddle of latte, which was rapidly spilling across the tile floor, and slid himself into an empty desk in front of Erwin. Erwin arched an eyebrow at him, and Levi arched an eyebrow back at him. When it became apparent that Erwin would not win this silent game (Levi had had much practice in eyebrow arching; he’d utilized this particular ability to convey everything from horror to interest and every shade of emotion in between; if there had been an eyebrow arching category in the Olympics, Levi had no doubt that he would come in first, second, AND third.) he cleared his throat, a loud harrumph that called the class back to attention, and continued his lecture, trying to ignore Levi’s dark eyes tracking his every move.

Once the last student had cleared the classroom, trailing coffee footprints behind them (Erwin made a mental note to tip the custodian heftily later), he turned to Levi.

“Is there a reason why you’re here?” he asked, straightening his notes and putting them neatly in his briefcase.

He was absorbed in reading the first few sentences of Mikasa’s free response (the girl really was a phenomenal writer, she’d go places in life unlike that delinquent boyfriend of hers), so he didn’t notice Levi approaching him until he was practically on top of him. He looked up to find Levi’s face inches from his own.

“Well, you see, Professor,” Levi said, his voice innocent and wondering as he worried his lower lip between his teeth in a way that made Erwin’s throat suddenly feel dry, “I’ve just been needing some extra help on this one assignment…”

“Oh?” Erwin could barely get the word out. “Is that right?”

“Mhm,” Levi said, setting his knee firmly down on the seat of the chair, squeezed in tight between the armrest and the side of Erwin’s thigh. “Might you be free for some…one-on-one time?” he asked, leaning in and pressing a kiss to the side of Erwin’s neck. Erwin swallowed roughly, reaching a hand up in between his and Levi’s bodies to loosen his tie, which was feeling too tight all of a sudden.

“What brought this on?” he asked, trying to ignore the stiffness in his pants that was currently becoming more insistent and showed no signs of abating any time soon. “This is hardly professional conduct.” 

Levi pulled back, dark eyes searching Erwin’s blue ones. “Well, if you want to know,” he said, breaking character, “I brought lunch. Also, I was bored.”

“And Heaven forbid you should be bored,” Erwin said, stifling a laugh, his hands resting on Levi’s waist. The chair creaked ominously beneath them, reminding them that it was not built to hold the weight of two adult males in their prime.

“I’ve already gone through three different spectrums of blue,” Levi said. “I want to repaint the bedroom. I’ve decided on Downpour. But that’s neither here nor there,” he continued, stealing another peck at Erwin’s neck. “Are we gonna bang or what? The room’s not going to paint itself, you know.” 

Erwin laughed at this. “Well,” he said, standing up, forcing Levi to quickly remove himself from Erwin’s lap, “I suppose if you want some one-on-one time, you ought to come to my office hours.” 

“Office hours?” Levi asked, adopting his innocent, naïve tone once again, looking up at Erwin with big eyes. “When are your office hours, Professor?” 

Erwin made a show of checking his watch. “I suppose I could make a spot of time for you, right now,” he said, picking up his briefcase and striding towards the classroom door, taking care to step over the puddle of coffee. Levi trotted behind him, a paper bag dangling from his wrist. “This is a one time thing, you understand, the other students might feel it unfair.”

Levi smiled sunnily up at him and slipped his smaller hand into Erwin’s.

* * *

The croquettes Levi had made lay forgotten in their Tupperwares, shoved to the side of Erwin’s desk as Erwin bent him over the unforgiving mahogany and bit a kiss, a promise, a phrase that Levi couldn’t quite catch, into the skin at the base of his jaw. A strangled whimper spilled from Levi’s throat as Erwin ground himself nonchalantly against Levi, heat and roughness just barely diluted through the denim of Levi’s jeans. 

“You planned this,” Erwin said, amused, as he examined the small bottle of lube Levi had packed along with the croquettes. “You naughty boy.” 

Levi opened his mouth to protest, but Erwin was already popping open the cap and slicking the fingers of one hand up, the other deftly reaching around to unbutton Levi’s dark-wash jeans and tug them below his hips, to bunch somewhere around his knees along with his boxers. A finger pressed into him, long, tight, delicious, and Levi shuddered, biting his lower lip to try and suppress his noises. And yes, erwin’s door was locked, he wasn’t willing to be quite that kinky, but still, this WAS a private, respectable institution, and Levi was sure the dean wouldn’t take it too kindly if he found them in this sort of situation –

His inhibitions flew out the window, and he keened, high and sharp, as Erwin slotted a second finger into him, his free hand pressing down on the small of Levi’s back as he scissored his digits, rubbing firmly across the nubbly lump of Levi’s prostate once he found it. Levi’s fingers scrabbled across the top of Erwin’s desk, knocking over Erwin’s name plate and a tape dispenser shaped like a goldfish in his attempt to ground himself on something solid. 

Erwin tugged his fingers out, and Levi whined, his hips juddering back, frantic, and Erwin chuckled, leaned over to press a kiss to the back of Levi’s neck, before there was the sound of a zipper and the pop of bottle cap, followed by a wet, positively filthy sound that sent Levi’s cock pulsing between his thighs. He squirmed impatiently, twisting his spine to glare over his shoulder at Erwin, who just smiled rather infuriatingly at him.

He opened his mouth to say something, some snarky insult, but any good insults he might have had stored up flew out of his mind as Erwin pressed the head of his cock – hot, burning, velvet – against the rim of Levi’s hole, and Levi’s mouth fell open in a silent sob as Erwin nudged himself in, inch by blissfully agonizing inch, a slight burn but incredibly satisfying as Erwin used one of his hands to press Levi against the hard wood, making him lie there and take it. Levi’s hands curled into fists on the desktop as he trembled beneath Erwin’s firm hold.

Erwin’s hips rolled lazily, bucking easily into Levi, who whined, biting at his lip and clenching down on every in stroke, trying to keep Erwin in. Erwin’s hand was still pressing him down firmly, and he couldn’t writhe, could barely get enough air to beg, not that he was going to, but this was surely torture by some legal standard, a cruel and unusual punishment, and he opened his mouth to snap at Erwin –

“Professor Smith?” A voice from outside the door, a few sharp raps, and though Levi knew for a fact the door was locked, had checked it himself, he still tensed up, preparing to grab his pants and dive out the window if it was necessary. “Professor Smith? Are you in?”

it was at this moment that Erwin chose to start thrusting roughly, grinding himself directly against Levi’s prostate, and Levi tore gouges in the wood as he tried to stop his voice from breaking into a wail, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes at how good it was.

He turned his head to look at Erwin, mouthing silent pleas for mercy, but Erwin just bent down to meet him with a kiss, swallowing the noises he could no longer seem to hold back, effectively pinning him to the desk as he continued to roll his hips and thrust directly into Levi’s prostate. His hand slid beneath Levi, wrapped itself around his weeping cock, and Levi screamed; he couldn’t help it, sobbing desperately as he knocked more things off the desk, a picture frame, a cup of pencils.

“Did you hear that?” the voice outside asked. A different voice responded in the affirmative.

“It was probably one of the construction workers in the Square,” the second voice explained. “Probably scared a squirrel or something. It doesn’t look like Professor Smith is in right now, anyway; are you free for lunch?”

Levi reared his head back once the two voices were no longer in earshot, sobbing for breath as Erwin continued pounding into him, stroking in tandem.

“God, Levi,” Erwin hissed, the fingers of one hand digging into the pale skin at Levi’s hip, where it was sure to leave bruises. “Just, just come already, I can’t keep this up.” 

Levi choked on a sob as his hips stuttered down into Erwin’s firm grasp as he spilt himself across Erwin’s desk drawers.

* * *

As they sat lazily eating croquettes (after having first cleaned their hands and skin and the desk with wet wipes; Levi really had planned ahead), Erwin looked over at Levi, who sat perched on his desk, still half naked. It was a view he thought he might be able to get used to.

Levi twirled a swizzle stick around his mouth absentmindedly, chewing on the end while he examined the books in the shelves behind Erwin. His gaze drifted over Erwin, who was currently wearing a grin to rival this morning’s.

“What’s the matter with you?” Levi asked, still chewing on the swizzle stick. “You on drugs or something?”

“Nah,” Erwin said, leaning forward and wrapping his arms around Levi, pressing his head against Levi’s chest and smiling even more (if that were possible) when Levi’s hand came up to card absentmindedly through his hair, “I’m just thinking about how much extra credit I can give you on your paper.”

A short silence. And then Levi laughed, a soft, throaty sound that Erwin silenced as he tugged Levi down for a kiss, the swizzle stick dropping somewhere on the floor as Erwin pinned Levi to the desk again.


	10. Chamomile Tea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because Erwin just seems like the kind of guy who has ridiculous pajamas and/or underwear. I suppose the story is going to get 'deeper' from here on out instead of just pure fluff and romantic comedy.

Levi prided himself on having a flawless immune system, his white cells military trained to detect even the most innocuous bacteria from the outside world, as he called the rest of the world outside the four walls of his flat, the coffee shop, or Erwin’s office, which he had started to spend a fair bit of his free time in. He used the excuse that his subway card had run out of fare, he just hadn’t gotten around to adding more to it, and he was far too poor (cheap, Erwin privately thought, with a secret smile) to take a cab, and besides, Erwin was right here and he had a perfectly functional car.

Unfortunately, it quickly turned out that that was not the case. Levi’s immune system was far from flawless, and it may or may not have had something to do with the fact that he had refrained from getting his annual flu shot that year, or it may have been because he was getting too little sleep, going to bed late (and Erwin may or may not have played a major part in that) and getting up early to make coffee (Erwin was downright useless without some form of caffeine running through his system, and as of December 17, 2014, Levi still had not managed to find a suitable replacement for Julie. Obviously there were other Mr. Coffee machines out there, and he’d nearly been swayed by a Keurig model he saw in the mall the other day when he’d been shopping for Erwin’s Christmas present, but Julie had been one of a kind).

“Levi, you’re looking a bit odd, are you sure you’re quite alright?” Hange asked him in a weirdly perceptive manner, quirking an eyebrow at him after she had called his name three times the morning of December 18th, even going so far as to wave her hand in front of his blankly staring face and waving the tin of chai spice underneath his nose, which, on any normal morning, would have woken him up straight away. Unfortunately, this particular morning, Levi gaped blankly off into the wall, mechanically running the broom back and forth over two tiles that had already been swept clean at least twenty-three passes ago.

She placed a hand on his forehead (a bit warm, she concluded, though she had far more experience with organisms of the bacterial type) and the fact that Levi didn’t even so much as flinch was a rather alarming fact. The normal Levi would have either fiercely bitten her or swatted her away by now. She frowned at him before gently wresting the broom from his limp fingers and setting him in the storage closet by the coffee filters before heading back out to place a call to the university.

At least fourteen extension calls later, and one lady yelling very hysterically at her in German, Zöe finally reached Erwin’s office. Two seconds later, Erwin had sent out an email to his class that he wasn’t feeling well, and that class was canceled.

Eren, for his part, was extremely relieved. He collapsed into bed, bags under his eyes, from his latest Netflix marathon and the four sentences he’d managed to type on Erwin’s latest assignment. Mikasa frowned at him as he unrolled his blanket from around her, she’d been perfectly warm and comfortable as a blanket burrito, thank you very much, but Eren paid her no mind as he slung an arm around her and fell asleep almost instantly, nearly squashing her against the wall in the process.

* * *

Levi shook himself out of his catatonic state a few hours later, looking around at the unfamiliar surroundings he now found himself in. He looked down to find himself bundled up in a set of fuzzy pajamas that were far too big for him and had been rolled up around the sleeves a few times. They were a dark, royal blue, with little green stars spattered on the fabric, and Levi wrinkled his nose at the, frankly, sheer ugliness of the whole thing. He felt sticky and sweaty and smothered, and vaguely wondered through a haze what kind of monster would drug him and then swaddle him in this hideous clothing. It was truly a horrifying insult to his dignity.

He looked up as the door swung open, fully expecting to come face to face with said monster. In the end, he only ended up gaping as the monster came out from behind the door bearing a tray of soup and a box of tissues.

Surely something was wrong. Surely that thing had stolen Erwin’s face and body and clothes and stuff. That must be it. He squinched his eyes very tightly, thinking that when he opened them again the monster wearing Erwin's face would be gone. While his eyes were closed, he had a horrifying thought about a Japanese horror movie he'd once seen, where the person had closed his eyes and waited for the monster to go away but when he opened them again the monster was standing nose-to-nose with him, and he thought that perhaps if that were the case he would just keep his eyes closed forever. 

A warm, gentle hand caressed through his hair, and Levi wrinkled his nose at the thought of the hand getting all sweaty, and he reached up to push it away, fully expecting to find some hand with talons in it or something equally monstrous of the sort. 

When he cracked open an eye just a sliver, he found Erwin - no, the monster - smiling down at him. 

"Whaddaya want?" he asked, and his voice sounded much weaker than the intimidating tone he'd intended. "Do you know who I am? Who do you think you are to do this" - with a vague, sloppy gesture towards his present attire - "to me? This is cruel and unusual punishment, I'll have you know, I'll report you to Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA..."

The monster wearing Erwin's face smiled, pressed a soft kiss to his forehead, and offered him a spoon of clear broth that, upon inspection, did not appear to be poisonous. Levi complained constantly throughout the meal, which was actually quite good, and when he looked down, the bowl of soup was all gone, even the crackers that had been put in it. 

The monster left a mug of chamomile tea and some pills by his bedside, and Levi squinted at them, deep in thought, because he'd heard that monsters often did that sort of thing, showed a bit of kindness to get you to trust them and then bam! They turned you into ham sandwiches. He looked down at himself, practically drowning in the overlarge clothes, and decided with a sort of triumphant defiance that no monster would be able to turn him into a ham sandwich; he was far too thin. With that, he popped the aspirins (for that was what they were) into his mouth, took a refreshing gulp of tea, and rolled over into a burrito to go to sleep again.

* * *

Levi woke up a few hours later with a dry throat and short of breath. He looked up at the popcorn ceiling, which was absolutely nothing like his own, at the soft yellow light that bathed the corners of the room from the lamps on the nightstand tables. This bed was positively massive, he thought to himself, as he tested its firmness with the heel of his hand, and rather soft. It felt like sleeping on a cloud. 

He manoeuvred himself out of bed, quite the challenge in itself, shivering as his feet came in contact with the hardwood floors, which were, much to his delight, a dark cherry wood that was cut even and smooth along the grain, each plank blending seamlessly into the next. The horrendous star pajamas, which he was still wearing much to his displeasure, fell over his bare feet, and he had to grasp a large handful of the material by his thighs and hike it up so that he wouldn't trip on the fuzzy fabric. 

Levi peeked out into the dark hallway, looking to the left and to the right. He could make out some vague dark shapes on the walls, the sharp corners of picture frames slowly swimming into view as he squinted and got closer. He stood on tiptoe, trying to make out the people in the picture, eventually determining that one of them was Erwin, and that the other were shorter beings that probably didn't matter as much. A few pictures down, Erwin with his arm wrapped around another equally gigantic, blonde man, laughing and dressed in a crimson graduation gown, his golden tassel falling into his eyes as he held up his diploma, which was, Levi noted with a smile, presented upside down in the photo. He thought about his graduation, where it had been raining and his hair had straggled over his eyes, and he didn't have a golden tassel, and he certainly hadn't had any sort of other blond behemoth to wrap his arms around and smile at a camera for. 

But that was a story for another time. 

He peeked into another room, finding it to be a bathroom, and, much to his relief, perfectly spotless, like something Levi would have cleaned himself. He flicked on the light, ran the water, which was refreshingly crisp, and washed his face, looking up to examine himself in the mirror. His cheeks were dusted with red, and his nose looked a bit like a strawberry, and he had this tickle in the back of his throat that wouldn't seem to subside no matter how many mouthfuls he took of the tap water or cleared his throat. He frowned at himself, scrubbing away a disobedient few strands of hair that had fallen over his forehead, before flicking off the fluorescent lights and leaving the bathroom. 

He padded down the dark hallway, stretching out the kink in his back, and headed towards the sound of someone taka takking on a keyboard. 

* * *

He found Erwin in the dining room, tapping away at his laptop and making marks in a bold red hand on a paper he had beside him. Levi clung to the door jamb, forgetting about the star pajamas for the moment, and smiled as Erwin ran his hands through his golden hair, tugging at the strands as he made several bright red slash marks across the paper in frustration. 

Erwin looked up to find a set of coal black eyes staring at him from the doorway, ringed with dark circles, and he put aside the paper (which was none other than Eren's) and looked at Levi expectantly. Levi moved in from the shadow of the doorway, edging into the room, eyes darting around and taking in every detail, from the tablecloth with flowers on it (Erwin's mother's) and the cabinet of wedding china (also Erwin's mother's - and father's, too, he supposed, although Erwin doubted his father had so much as lifted a pinky to help choose the dishes) to the current state of Erwin's hair (tousled, falling over his forehead). 

"I had a bad dream," Levi stated matter of factly, plopping himself down into Erwin's lap and snuggling back against him. It was warm, solid, and Levi could even ignore the fact he was wearing hideously chosen star pajamas as Erwin's hands folded over his stomach, cuddling him. "I dreamed there was a monster and it was wearing your skin and it fed me soup, probably made of your tears or something."

"Oh?" Erwin rumbled, amused. Levi could feel the laugh against his back. "It must have been a ferocious monster." 

"It was alright, I suppose," Levi said, twisting his head to look up at the underside of Erwin's jaw, which was currently sporting a fine patch of stubble. He had a vague vision of Erwin scraping his stubble against his inner thighs and leaving red streaks, and a delicious shiver ran down his spine at the thought. Erwin looked down at him. 

"Are you cold?" he asked, eyebrows knitting in concern, and a hoarse laugh spilled from Levi's mouth, followed by a round of coughing. He was the farthest thing from cold. 

He lifted up his arms, the sleeves of the star pajamas dangling down from his hands. "Do you think we can take this off? It's sort of hot and smothery and also it's really ugly."

Erwin raised an eyebrow at him, before laughing and acquiescing, scooping Levi up into his arms and herding him off to the bedroom again. 

* * *

Levi giggled as Erwin's stubble scraped across his chest, his vision spinning the popcorn ceiling into a blur as Erwin sucked a dusky nipple into his mouth, teethed gently against the sensitive flesh before pulling off with a wet sucking noise that had Levi whimpering and sipping at the air as he tried to breathe without aggravating his throat any more than it already was. He gasped as Erwin's mouth, burning, licked long stripes up and down the quivering skin of his stomach, deft hands quickly unknotting the drawstring around Levi's waist and tugging those horrid, awful pajamas off Levi's legs. Levi had the presence of mind to kick them promptly to the floor.

Levi's hands tangled themselves weakly in Erwin's hair as he licked at his stiffening cock through the thin silk of his boxers, which, thankfully, the monster had not taken it upon itself to change into some equally horrifying astral undergarment. The same burning tongue traced every inch of him through the fabric, moistening it with his mouth, and Levi whimpered (though he'd never admit it later, when asked) as Erwin lifted his head, looked at him with a positively wicked smile as a thin tendril of saliva and precome and, and whatever it was, kept his mouth attached to Levi's boxers, which by now had a rather noticeable tent in the front. 

Under Levi's fascinated stare, Erwin manoeuvred his erection out of the flap of the dark blue material, wrapping his hand around the base with a sort of familiarity and propriety that had Levi squirming underneath his touch. He began to stroke, soft, delicate flicks of his wrist right as he reached the top, a thumb coming up to rub soothingly at the head, massaging the clear, sticky fluid that had begun to weep from the slit back into Levi's skin, and Levi felt like an inferno, like surely he was going to be scorched by the time it was over, a volcano waiting to happen. 

Erwin took a few long strokes to rub at the vein tracing up the underside of Levi's cock, his head dipping down to press wet, open-mouthed kisses to the head, by now a deep pink, tilting his face back up afterwards so Levi could see glimmers of fluid at the swell of his lips, which made him realise in that moment exactly how close he was, practically already teetering on the edge of orgasm without knowing it. 

"Levi." Erwin's voice sounded as rough as Levi's throat currently felt, and a tingle of pleasure bloomed in his stomach at the sound. "Do you, do you possibly think you could take it?"

That question was positively absurd, and Levi let him know that as he rolled his eyes and tilted his hips towards the other man, who, as per usual, had not waited for an answer before turning to rummage through his nightstand drawer for lube. He popped the cap open, and even through Levi's much diluted sense of smell, the air was immediately scented with cherries, and Erwin smiled apologetically down at him even as Levi wrinkled his nose in distaste. Cherry lube was much like something from a pornographic video featuring actors/actresses of dubious ages, usually in high school uniform, and Levi was a college graduate thank you very much, and -

Levi would have continued his inner tirade had two thick fingers not wriggled into him and hooked directly into his prostate without a second thought. 

As a third finger was added and stretched, a thumb gently rubbing against the slicked muscle of the outer rim and the other hand gently pumping him to keep his interest, he pushed his head back into the pillows, worrying his lower lip between his teeth as he tried not to scream. He could hardly breathe as it was, his nose all clogged up and his throat not too much better, and it would surely be a waste of air on a moan. He could not, however, choke back the sob of dismay when the fingers were removed, a sound that melted into a broken whine as the head of Erwin's cock rubbed against him, teasing, back and forth so slowly that Levi thought he would probably die like this -

A nudge. Another, just barely stretching Levi out, and his fingers wound themselves in the sheets as he tried to roll his hips down, because the heat against his entrance isn't enough and it needs to be inside him right this instant or he really will go crazy from the blood boiling through his veins. 

Erwin stretched him out, inch by agonizingly lovely inch, until his hips were flush with Levi's bottom, and Levi tried to writhe against all the pleasure, but he couldn't find any strength left with which to do that, and instead settled for looking up at Erwin in wonder and fascinated desire as Erwin placed broad hands on Levi's hips and thrust into him with deliciously rough, long, smooth motions that ground against Levi's prostate wonderfully.

And Levi had been planning on telling Erwin, of course he had, but when Erwin's hand wrapped around his cock, rubbing at the aching head again, he couldn't stop himself from tensing up, sobbing brokenly, his hips jerking up erratically as he came over his fingers and wrist. He blacked out almost immediately after, missing the little smile and whispered words Erwin gave him afterwards.

* * *

When he woke up, another few hours later, he was ravenously hungry, and he actually didn't feel too sticky. It was rather hot, though, and Levi quickly determined the source of this unprecedented warmth to be asleep and snoring beside him, an arm flung over his waist. 

Wriggling out from beneath the heavy arm, Levi tiptoed to the kitchen, where he flung open the refrigerator and examined its contents, which were, admittedly, pathetic. 

He was debating the merits of a bagel with some dubiously expired cream cheese versus some leftover porridge (both options looked rather horrible, like something you might feed a particularly disobedient kindergartener) when Erwin shuffled in, eyes squinched and hair sticking up at the back of his head. 

"What are you doing?" he asked, barely restraining a yawn. "It's two in the morning. You should be resting."

"I was hungry," Levi explained. "I only had that soup and crackers the monster gave me yesterday. Do you think there's any delivery places still open right now?"

Erwin flicked on the kitchen light, and Levi stared at him for about half a second before backing away in horror. 

" _What_ in God's name are you wearing?" he gasped, holding up his hands as though it could prevent Erwin's advance into the kitchen.

Erwin, for his part, was wearing a set of white fuzzy pajamas emblazoned with Tweety Bird, and he frowned at Levi as he nudged past him to get to the top shelves of the pantry. 

"We've got cereal, soup, soup, more soup, some pretzels, instant noodles," Erwin mumbled sleepily, setting the items down on the counter. Levi took a quick look down at his own attire, was relieved beyond belief to be wearing just some too-big, black pajamas. "Cup of Noodles, too, practically gourmet. And they were a present from my mother. The star ones were, too. She likes buying me pajamas." 

Levi gaped at the broad spread of Erwin's back. "It was you all along," he gasped, the horrid truth dawning on him. "You were the monster this whole time!"

"Oh, hush up, Levi," was the reply, and in Levi's state of shock, it was no wonder he allowed himself to be carted back to bed and spoon-fed more soup and crackers.      

 

 

 

 


	11. Peppermint Mocha

The university went on break one week before Christmas. Eren turned in his final paper of the semester, smiling brightly at Erwin, as this was the only paper that had zero contributions from Mikasa or Netflix scripts of TV shows. Erwin had decided at the beginning of the semester, after reading Eren's admittedly concise and well-worded synopsis of Thor: The Dark World, that he would have no choice but to fail the boy for blatant plagiarism; however, now, looking up at Eren, who had dark rings under his eyes but a brilliantly proud smile on his face, he decided that perhaps he could pass the boy after all. 

He was feeling rather festive and getting into the holiday spirit quite nicely. He had found out from Zöe that the 25th happened to not only be Christmas, but was also Levi's birthday, a coincidence which tickled Erwin to no end and a fact that she had stolen off Levi's W2 form. Levi seemed to be the farthest from festive person that he knew. In fact, Erwin had already picked out a perfect Christmas/birthday present, a nice cable knit sweater in shades of cream and grey and beige, in a pattern that may or may not have highly resembled a certain disgruntled cat that had recently achieved Internet fame. 

And though he and Levi had only known each other less than a semester, he'd had a copy of his apartment key made in shining silver, and had hooked it onto a key ring, which he then put into a nice, flat box along with his address written out in full, zip code and postal box and all. He figured it was only fair, since he'd already (illegally) made a copy of Levi's key. Erwin wasn't particularly sappy, but he did rather enjoy seeing two toothbrushes in the water glass on Levi's bathroom sink, along with all the other signs that litter two peoples' immediate surroundings when they're in that state of being almost-married but not quite. However, the commute from Levi's apartment to the university was not something he particularly enjoyed. 

He shrugged as he wrapped the key box in a bright red-and-green striped wrapping paper, creasing the edges carefully and holding down the flaps while he taped it shut. 

It would be what it would be, but for his part, he would rather appreciate it if Levi would take the rather blatant hint and move in with him. It was far too silly to pay rent on two places when they could just as easily live in one. 

* * *

 

Erwin presented Levi with the key box a few days before Christmas, when the morning rush of coffee-drinkers had just faded away and the store was quiet once more, the scent of chai and gingerbread and peppermint hanging heavy in the air. It smelt rather like a candy house, and Levi looked like he was in heaven, though Erwin had to take shallow breaths to stop himself from gagging on the overly-sweet air. 

Erwin rested his chin on a palm, watching as Levi swept up behind the counter with a little smile on his face. Erwin hadn't really paid close attention to it, but Levi looked downright adorably domestic when he was cleaning, using one hand to push loose strands of hair back and worrying at his lower lip as he tackled a particularly tough sticky spot where a clot of brown sugar had decided to settle on the countertop. Erwin couldn't wipe the smile off his face quickly enough as Levi finally looked up at him, the tiniest of good-natured scowls furrowing across his face as he walked over, broom still in hand, and plopped down opposite Erwin. 

"You've got that really stupid look on your face again," Levi informed him, reaching over for Erwin's ceramic mug, half-full with peppermint mocha, and lifted it to his mouth, taking a few sips and leaving a little foam mustache on his upper lip. "You know the one, as if you'd just been told Marley and Me had a happy ending after all. It's terribly sentimental. Let's hope your students don't see you like this, or you'll never get rid of the reputation that you're a sucker and they can just cry and you'll change their grade for them." 

_Levi had, unfortunately, not been terribly amused by the information that Eren had passed the course. It probably didn't help that Eren had paraded into the coffeeshop just a few days ago, holding up his grade report and telling everyone and anyone who would listen that he would, in fact, be progressing to the next semester with his GPA relatively unscathed._

_Levi vaguely wondered how long it would take him to become a university professor at that particular university, and had done some calculations in regards to time and expense spent on this pursuit, balancing this against the amount of satisfaction he would retain from failing Eren out of a productive university career. The pros to this, which included being easily able to have vigorous office sex with Erwin on a relatively regular basis, easily outweighed the cons, but Erwin had managed to convince him that being a professor was a much more demanding job than it looked like. Levi had scoffed at this, but being that Erwin had been currently nestled hot and deep inside him at the time, had decided to let the matter drop in favour of other, more pressing, circumstances._

Erwin arched an eyebrow at him across the black granite table. "Do I?" he asked, opening his eyes wide, and making his face look as innocent as possible. "I wasn't aware I was making any face."

Levi rolled his eyes at him, setting the ceramic mug back on the table with a clink and licking away the foam mustache with the tip of a pink tongue, smirking when Erwin's eyes instinctively zeroed in on it and traced its movements. "Come off it, Erwin. What's that package under the table? Might it be, oh, I don't know -" he batted his eyelashes, and Erwin took a brief moment to wonder if this was what Levi might look like as a girl, a thought which quickly darted to what Levi might look like in lingerie - "pour moi?" Levi's lips pursed on the last syllable, like a kiss, and Erwin pinched himself on the thigh, trying very hard to stay away from untoward thoughts; Levi's shift wasn't over for another few hours. 

"It is pour you," Erwin stuttered, trying to ignore the way Levi was currently eye-fucking him over the table right now. "Er, for toi, for you, I mean," he said, blushing as he slid the rectangular box across the table towards Levi. "I know it's not Christmas, but I just wanted to give it to you a bit earlier..." The rest of his sentence trailed off. For how neat Levi was, he was a maniac when it came to unwrapping presents, especially those with his name scrawled across the gift tag, and bits of red and green wrapping paper littered the floor around their feet in no time at all. 

Levi lifted the lid off the box, a puzzled expression wending its way across his face as he pulled out the key from its resting spot. He looked up at Erwin in obvious confusion. Erwin hastened to explain.

"I mean, obviously you don't have to go there if you don't want to," Erwin rushed, "but it's a key to my flat, I thought maybe, you know, if you ever wanted to spend any time there because I'm getting too in your way at your place, you could and -"

Levi shushed him by reaching over the table and pressing his index finger against Erwin's lips, which stopped moving. 

"I see," Levi said with a smirk, "you want me to move in with you. Isn't that right?" he asked, when Erwin still didn't reply. His mouth had gone dry.

Erwin swallowed roughly. "Yes, that's exactly right," he agreed, nodding for emphasis. "I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to, I know we've only known each other for like four months, but I would like it very much. It's closer to work, for both of us, and you're always complaining about how your bed is too small for both of us and -"

Levi shushed him again, looking down at the key in his hand, running his index finger over its ridges in contemplation. After a few moments, during which Erwin worried that he was being far too forward, Levi looked up at him again.

"What brand is your washing machine?" Levi wanted to know. Erwin gaped at him. 

"Er, a Kenmore Elite...?" he said, rather unsure as to what this question was leading to.   
"Front or top-loading?"  
"...Front?"

The instant Erwin said that, he saw Levi's pupils practically dilate with an unbridled, savage sort of lust that had Erwin half-wondering if Levi was going to stand up this instant, drag him into the storeroom, and demand to be fucked by the coffee filters. Unfortunately, Levi did nothing of the sort. Rather, he just closed his fingers around the key and smiled rather sweetly at Erwin.

"Consider it done," he said, getting up and moving over to the counter to help another customer who had just come in. "But you're helping me move the rest of my stuff." Erwin agreed to this without a question. "And I refuse to put my clothes in the same drawer as your pajamas. In fact, can you donate them to Goodwill or something?" Levi asked over his shoulder as he fiddled with the espresso machine for the new customer's order. "Actually, Goodwill probably won't take them, as hideous as they are, you're better off burning them."

"Levi, they were presents from my mother," Erwin said, exasperated but happy all the same.

"That wasn't a no!" Levi shouted back at him over the roar of the blender.

Erwin closed his eyes and smiled into the curve of his hand so Levi couldn't see. 

* * *

 "I think that's the last of it," Erwin said, straightening up and wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, the other rubbing at the ache in his left shoulder. Erwin's foyer and entrance hallway were littered with cardboard boxes filled with Levi's odds and ends ("Why do you have so many bottles of Windex?" Erwin had asked. "Do you really need all of them?" Foolish questions they had been; Levi had glared him into submission). Levi padded out of the bedroom -  _their_ bedroom now, Erwin realized, with a not unpleasant jolt - where he had been sorting his clothes into various drawers in Erwin's dresser and closet. 

"Well, this is all very honeymoon-ish," Levi said, eyeing the remaining boxes. "Kind of." He fiddled with a hole in the thigh of the capris he had worn for the moving process. Levi would deny they were capris to his grave, men didn't wear capris, he would argue, but in Erwin's educated opinion, those particular denim pants were undoubtedly capris, and had the added benefit of making Levi's legs appear even more slender than they were, elongating the muscles in his calf and tapering down to slim ankles and feet that were currently encased in mismatched KB ankle socks, black and orange. "I think you're supposed to carry me over the doorway, though," he said, looking up at Erwin through his bangs, which had fallen over his forehead. "I'd carry you, but I think you're tall to make it through the door sideways."

Erwin smiled, and, ignoring the ache in his left shoulder, scooped up a halfheartedly protesting Levi, marched out the front door, and gave Levi an Eskimo kiss before re-situating him in his arms and marching directly back in. 

* * *

 _It really was like a cloud,_ Levi thought to himself, as Erwin deposited him none-too-gently on the bed before crawling on top of him and pinning his wrists to the mattress before pressing a kiss into Levi's mouth. Erwin tasted like peppermint and the strawberries Levi had cut up earlier for a fruit smoothie, and Levi sighed in delight as Erwin's tongue licked playfully against his own while Erwin's free hand crept up the old cotton T-shirt Levi was presently dressed in, palm burning against the flesh of his stomach and chest, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. Levi squirmed as Erwin's thumb flicked gently over his left nipple, his hands struggling up against Erwin's hold as a thumb and forefinger gently rolled the pebbled skin in its grasp. Erwin detached himself from Levi's mouth, his breathing heavy, and Levi quickly became aware of an insistent warmth pressing against his upper thigh, where the hole in his not-capris were. He nudged against it experimentally, smiling in triumph as Erwin groaned, his eyes fluttering shut as he ground himself against Levi's thigh for a moment of self-indulgence. 

"You're wicked," Erwin informed him as he opened his eyes again. "Absolutely evil." He pressed a kiss to the side of Levi's neck, nibbling, sucking at the pulse point and smiling as a soft moan vibrated through Levi's throat, under his lips. "It makes me want to eat you up." 

"Then, ah, why don't you?" Levi asked, arching up into erwin's hold. "We've got all the time in the world."

Erwin pulled back, looked down at Levi rather seriously. "Unfortunately," he said, looking almost apologetic, "I'm positively starved. As such, I have taken the liberty of ordering a pizza, and in this case, we do not actually have all the time in the world, but approximately twenty minutes." 

Levi stared at him in disbelief before rolling his eyes and laughing.

"Well, Professor," he said, adopting a naive, breathy tone that never failed to send Erwin's blood boiling, "I suppose we'd better try to hurry this session, then, I wouldn't want you to miss your next appointment."

Erwin smiled sunnily up at him, before dipping down, pressing Levi's shirt up around his neck and laving kisses to every inch of creamy skin, paying attention to the dusky nipples, which had risen into rosy peaks under Erwin's previous ministrations. Levi's hands, free now, tangled themselves in Erwin's hair, fingers gently massaging at the scalp, where the dark roots were, tugging strands of gold through his fingers as Erwin's kisses traveled further down, leaving a ring of wet around Levi's navel before fingers started fiddling at the button of Levi's pants. 

Erwin barely prepared him, the merest of breaches with two fingers, some impatient stretching that Levi personally thought he didn't need at all. He was quickly proven wrong, a shiver running down his spine as erwin pressed into him, all rough and delicious burn and stretch, and Levi thought he was surely going to die, it felt incredible, and he released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding as Erwin pressed flush against his bottom. 

Erwin graciously gave him a moment to recuperate before tugging one of Levi's legs over his shoulder and proceeding to all but slam into him, pounding against Levi's prostate with uncanny accuracy, his left hand spread out over Levi's chest and holding him down. Levi's fingers fisted in the sheets as he strained up against Erwin's hand, moans and sobs spilling from his throat at every opportunity, sparks dancing behind his eyelids. Erwin's hand traced up Levi's skin before settling against his neck, and then a sudden halt in the thrusting, which had Levi writhing down in a futile attempt to milk more pleasure from Erwin's now-stationary cock. 

Before he could snap at Erwin, ask him why he'd stopped, Erwin was already talking, his voice strained and breathless. "Can I, Levi?" he asked, and Levi was utterly confused as to what he meant, wasn't Erwin already as deep inside him as he could possibly go? until Erwin's fingers twitched against his throat, applying just the slightest amount of pressure. Levi's breath caught, as he looked up at Erwin. This was something he'd only ever read about, in solitary nights spent on the Internet, and obviously there was the vague worry that Erwin would get caught up in the moment and choke him too much, but Erwin's gaze held nothing but kindness and respect (and quite a fair amount of lust, that was undeniable), and Levi  _had_ a rather hefty life insurance policy...

"Just, don't kill me, okay?" he asked, and Erwin laughed, a comforting sound.

"No, of course not," Erwin said, smiling as he began to thrust again. "You haven't even gotten the pleasure of using my washing machine yet. You can even name it." 

Levi had a sharp retort on the tip of his tongue, but as he began to speak, Erwin's cock was grinding directly against his prostate and Erwin's hand was wrapped around his throat, pressing him down into the mattress, into the pillows, and one of his hands wound itself in the sheets, the other flew up to wrap around Erwin's wrist, not tugging off, just a reminder, and he was sobbing shallowly, his eyes screwed shut, trying to get air even as Erwin's thrusts shoved the breath out of him in harsh little shoves. 

Erwin let up as Levi was sure he was going to die, and Levi took deep, sobbing gulps of breath, writhing as Erwin continued to thrust into him. 

Once his breathing had returned to a somewhat-normal rate, Erwin's hand was there, against his throat once again, pressing him down, and he was gagging on his sobs now, the pleasure addling his oxygen-deprived senses, and the world started to spin, black and white and bursts of colour sparking behind his eyelids, and he tried to warn Erwin, he was definitely going to come in the next three thrusts at this rate, the heat unspooling from the pit of his stomach like an anchor. His mouth quivered, forming the words even as he couldn't draw enough breath to speak them aloud, and there were some thuds in the distance that he thought were his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

"Coming!" Erwin's shout, combined with the release of pressure from around his throat, had Levi convulsing in the sheets, his vision going dark as he spilt liquid heat across his stomach and thighs. Heat bloomed in his stomach as Erwin's thrusts grew raggedy, erratic, working into him through his orgasm and eventually stuttering to a stop. It had been rather nice, Levi reflected, still taking deep breaths and watching the popcorn ceiling emerge into view again, but Erwin was pulling out and the mattress dipped and then sprung back up again as he got up. Levi vaguely wondered if he'd done anything wrong, if it hadn't felt good. But Erwin had come, hadn't he? He reached a trembling hand down to check. Indeed he had; therefore, it must have been good, right? Levi's head was still fuzzy, and the reasoning made no particular sense to him.

Erwin was talking to someone. Levi would have gone and checked, but he was at least 75% sure he wouldn't be able to stand up. 

The door closed. A few moments later, Erwin returned to the bedroom, fully clothed (hadn't he at least taken out his dick? Levi wondered fuzzily. Where had it gone?), scooped Levi out of bed, and carried him down the hall to the kitchen, where a pizza sat waiting on the table in its box. 

Levi allowed himself to be fed this gracious, greasy bounty that had come out of seemingly nowhere. 

* * *

"Hey, Levi," Erwin mumbled, sending a hot puff of breath across the back of Levi's neck. They were currently curled up in bed, done up with new sheets and blankets and pillowcases, having just taken a shower; Levi's hair was curling across his forehead, but he was far too tired and sated to do anything about it. 

"Hm?" he asked tiredly. Erwin's chest was pressed against the bare skin of his back, and the fabric of the bedclothes was soft against his naked skin, and, all in all, Levi personally thought it was Heaven. "Whazzit?" 

"I love you." 

Levi paused. That wasn't something just anybody said to any other person. That was a rather serious statement, something like being told you owed the IRS $3,000 or that you were going to be evicted if you didn't get rid of your cat immediately. He rolled over to face Erwin in an attempt to assess the situation.

Erwin was looking at him with a soft, hopeful sort of smile. His hair was falling across his forehead, a gleaming dark gold in the evening light.  _And_ he'd moved Levi's 37 or so bottles of Windex without too much complaint, and he hadn't killed Levi when he could have in an attempt to cash in his insurance policy, though insurance was something that the two of them had not yet discussed. And the man had a Kenmore elite front-loading washer. There was really only one option here. 

"I love you, too," Levi said, completely truthfully, and smiled back as Erwin grinned, wrapping Levi up in his arms. 

 

 


	12. Red Velvet Hot Chocolate

Like all other years, Erwin Smith was terribly excited for the holiday season. When he wasn't visiting Levi in the coffee shop during work, he threw his energies into decorating his - no, their, he thought to himself with a smile - apartment. He would drop Levi off at work, usually pressing a kiss on his cheek before he stepped out of the SUV, much to Levi's feigned displeasure, and would then take the Toyota off to buy more presents and decorations. Levi's manic present unwrapping was only matched in fervor to Erwin's manic present wrapping, and, since the 25th was none other than Christmas as well as Levi's birthday, Erwin was easily able to justify spending the better part of his end-of-the-year bonus on a multitude of assorted gifts he thought Levi might enjoy.

He bought a large pine tree, one taller than even him, and so bushy that he couldn't get it through the door without scattering a fine layer of fragrant needles all over the foyer. When he picked up Levi up from work, and had managed to keep his hands off the other man long enough to unlock the door, Levi squinted around in the darkness and asked why in the world the apartment smelt like an air freshener that one might hang in their car. Did Erwin know he was supposed to put those things in his car? Because Levi wouldn't put it past him if he didn't, the man could be rather dense sometimes.

Erwin had laughed, had taken Levi by the hand, and presented to him the ridiculously large Christmas tree he'd stuffed in the corner of the living room, where it was currently standing, undecorated and shedding needles all over the squashy leather armchair that Levi had come to adore with a passion, as it was the perfect place to curl up on a chilly morning with a blanket, a large mug of chai tea, and, more often than not, a chai-tea-stealing boyfriend who would promptly invade Levi's blanket nest the instant he'd just gotten warm, pick him up, and then plonk him down on his lap again.

Levi had at first wanted no part in decorating the Christmas tree, because, as he claimed, he "wanted no part in contributing to the massive jump in their electric bill for this month." Erwin had been unfazed by this, and had promptly gone out to the store to buy a rather obscene amount of ornaments and tinsel, which he had come back and proceeded to toss all over the apartment, on every available surface, much to Levi's horror. It appeared that Erwin had bought enough Christmas decorations for an entire neighbourhood.

However, coming back from work one day and laying eyes on the now-decorated Christmas tree, Levi could have sworn Erwin was blind. It was ridiculously, hideously decorated, with the ornaments unevenly spread out across the limbs, which were even now rapidly sweating needles onto the floor under Levi's critical gaze. Levi was just waiting for a wayward spark from the living room fireplace to set the whole flat ablaze. Presents, most of them badly wrapped and with 'Levi' written on the gift tag, were stacked haphazardly under the tree, and it had taken the better half of Levi's self-control to refrain from ripping each and every one of them open, though it was not yet Christmas.

"This, this is," Levi started to say, trying to point out a single flaw in the tree decorating scheme, but unable to decide which was the most worthy of criticism among the multitude. "It's..."

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Erwin asked, smiling joyfully down at Levi.

Unwilling to hurt Erwin's feelings, Levi waited until the man was sound asleep before flinging off the arm wrapped around his waist and tiptoeing to the living room to rearrange the glass balls and lights and god-awful glittery tinsel that left silver and gold all over his hands and arms around the tree's limbs. He redecorated it nicely, neatly, tastefully, until it looked like a very miniature version of something that might be put up in the Rockefeller Center. He added a few presents for Erwin to the pile under the tree - delightfully wrapped, he would add, all sharp corners and neat creases - that he had stashed away under the bathroom sink; Erwin never checked there, stocked as it was with only cleaning supplies and Levi's 37 bottles of Windex.

The night before Christmas, Erwin was insistent that they nail up their stockings - he had, much to Levi's surprise, found a stocking with his name embroidered on it in curling white script - over the fireplace. He was also adamant about leaving out a plate of gingerbread men (which Levi had stolen from the coffee shop when Zöe's back was turned) and a glass of eggnog (Levi did enjoy sweet things, but the taste of eggnog just didn't settle well with him).

They went to bed that night, Erwin practically vibrating with excitement until Levi sleepily dug an elbow halfheartedly into his ribs and told him that there was still time for Saint Nick to put him on the naughty list if he didn't stop right this instant. At this news, even though he was a fully grown, taxpaying adult who had no right to hold stock by a fictional fat man in a red suit, Erwin stilled instantly and Levi allowed himself to snuggle back into Erwin's chest and fall asleep.

* * *

Levi woke up at around 5 in the morning, shivering and all too aware of the empty space in the mattress behind him. His eyes still crusty with sleep, he yawned and rolled lazily out of bed, shuddering as the pads of his bare feet came into contact with the chilly hardwood floor. He padded out of the bedroom, wrapping his hands around his upper arms and rubbing vigorously to ward off the chill, hunting about the apartment for erwin and batting aside strands of hanging tinsel that Erwin had triumphantly strung across the tops of the doorjambs, where Levi couldn't reach, even on tiptoe, to take them off.

Heading towards the sound of the fire crackling away in the living room, Levi peeked around the doorjamb to find Erwin dozing in the squashy armchair by the fireplace. The plate of cookies was empty, save for one, and the eggnog had been drunk, leaving only a slight film of white on the glass. Levi tiptoed into the room, and, despite his attempts at stealthiness, Erwin startled awake as a log snapped in the fireplace. Groggily, he looked around the room wildly before his eyes alit on Levi.

"Oh, is it morning already?" he asked, reaching with grabby hands for Levi. "It's still so dark out!" with a glance thrown out the living room window as he pulled Levi into the armchair with him.

"It's bloody five in the morning, and I was cold," Levi grumbled, making himself comfortable in Erwin's lap. "I wasn't aware that my hot water bottle could take a sick day."

"Oh, is that what I am to you?" Erwin asked, grinning and pressing a kiss to Levi's bare shoulder. "You know, you really should wear something more than an undershirt and boxers if you get cold easily. And," as Levi curled his legs into the chair, pressing his chilled feet against Erwin's thigh, "socks might be a good investment as well."

Levi took a moment to look around the living room. Both his and Erwin's stockings were bulging, something he had not anticipated, and he could see soft flakes falling outside in the grey pre-dawn light of early, early morning. The pine tree stood proudly by the fire, balding on the lower branches, needles strewn across the tops of the wrapped presents. Erwin reached out and flicked one of the bells Levi had so tastefully hung across the middle branch, pressing a kiss to the base of Levi's neck as he leaned across to ring the bell. Levi squirmed as Erwin sucked a bit on the delicate, milky skin there, leaving a little mark. Levi had long ago stopped trying to convince Erwin against leaving marks on his skin, and instead he began to try to return the favour as frequently as possble, peppering Erwin's jaw and neck with little sucking marks that, much to Levi's displeasure, faded away in less than a day.

"I like what you did with the tree," Erwin murmured against Levi's skin, and Levi sighed as a soft flush of warmth ran through his belly. "It looks very nice."

"Yes, well, I think anything compared to what you did would look nice," Levi snorted, sighing softly as Erwin nuzzled into his neck some more.

Suddenly, Erwin started with realization. "Happy birthday!" he said, pulling away from Levi's much-abused neck to look at him. "And merry Christmas, also," he added, tugging Levi down for a kiss. He tasted almost disgustingly of eggnog and gingerbread.

"It looks like Santa never got to taste the stuff we put out for him, hmm?" Levi teased gently. Erwin had the good graces to look somewhat guilty.

"I got hungry," Erwin explained. "And I was worried about Santa's cholesterol levels."

"Right, of course," Levi said with a smirk. "Let me down," he said, wriggling out of Erwin's embrace. "I'll make some drinks and then I want to open presents, and then I wish to go back to bed and sleep some more."

* * *

Levi cracked open the tin of red velvet hot chocolate mix he'd swiped from the coffee shop along with the gingerbread men, and stirred it into a pot of warm milk he had set to simmering on the stove. When the thick aroma of hot chocolate filled the kitchen, he opened the pantry, stretching up on tiptoes to reach the bag of marshmallows on the top shelf, and taking out a few fat puffs to throw into the hot chocolate. He poured the deep red liquid into two steaming mugs, which he carefully carried back to Erwin in the living room.

Erwin sat down on the rug, sipping his hot chocolate, and cuddled him again while Levi reached for presents and opened them with an intensity that was only equal to his love for cleaning. Wrapping paper and bows and ribbons flew everywhere, some even lodging in Erwin's hair, and, since it had been years since Levi had received anything remotely close to this year's presents, he was enamored with each and every one of them.

He tugged on the cable knit sweater the instant he pulled it out of the box, admired the lovely crystal-cut bottle of cologne, spraying a bit on his neck, was brought to tears by the flat box containing a Roomba, which he promptly christened Elizabeth.

Erwin opened his presents with much more self-control than Levi had exhibited, and smiled with delight at the deep blue and green scarf and matched black gloves that fit his hand to a tee. Levi, who had also run out of ideas for what erwin could possibly want, had also gone the 'child' route and made Erwin a coupon booklet, and Erwin took great delight in reading each and every one of the coupons, which included "A back massage," "Bringing you lunch at work," and twelve "one sexual service of your choice."

"One for each month of the year," Levi explained in between Erwin's kisses. "I mean, you COULD use them all at once but at the rate we go, you know. Might as well make it special."

"I love it. I love you," Erwin said, looking at him very seriously and tugging him in for another kiss, his hand pushing up the cable knit sweater and undershirt and gently tweaking Levi's left nipple with his thumb. Levi sighed gently, arching languidly into Erwin's touch, the taste of hot chocolate and marshmallow thick in his mouth as he returned Erwin's kiss.

"Back at you," Levi said, standing up and holding out a hand to Erwin. "And don't pout," he added. "If we're going to bang, we're at least going to do it in a bed like civilized people."

Erwin smiled and let himself be helped up.

* * *

Levi walked out to the living room an hour or so later, stretching contentedly, his body aching deliciously and his inner thighs sticky, one of Erwin's hideously festive Christmas sweaters hanging off one shoulder, as Levi had adamantly refused against wearing his new one in his current state of debauchery.

He eyed the mess in the living room with distaste, though he had been the major contributor to it. He took the sole gingerbread man off the plate, biting off his head and munching on it on the way back to the bedroom, deciding, for once, to leave the cleaning for another time.


	13. Skinny Latte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Levi learns about the benefits of exercise.

After the holiday period had come and gone, Levi stepped into his dark-wash black jeans, which were puddled on the floor from his and Erwin's latest tryst. Much to his horror, he found that they were a tighter fit around his waist than he remembered, and the metal button and zipper had quite a bit of difficulty pulling the pants closed. Erwin, throughout this process, had been lying on his side in bed, with a rather appreciative look on his face as he lazily watched Levi tugging the denim up over his thighs. Levi tossed him a scowl as he tugged the jeans to sit higher up and not squeeze him as tightly.

The glass scale in the bathroom only confirmed what Levi already suspected. Over the holiday season, he, Levi Ackerman, who was still more than able to wear his old university clothes, had managed to gain weight. Granted, he hadn't weighed himself in quite a while, but it was still nothing short of shocking to discover that, if his last weigh-in a few years back had maintained accuracy over time, then Levi Ackerman had indeed gained roughly 20 pounds. He even took a glance behind him, just to make sure Erwin wasn't standing behind him and putting a foot on the scale to exaggerate the weight. He wasn't, and Levi downright pouted at this.

He thoroughly blamed the other man. 100%.

After spending rather a long time ensconced in the bathroom, fretting at the white digital numbers on the scale, Erwin finally tapped on the door. "Are you alright in there, Lee?" he asked, his voice slightly muffled through the wood. "You've been in there a while. Feeling okay?"

He grimaced at himself in the mirror, and, without a further glance at the number on the scale, left the bathroom with a huff.

* * *

Zöe, who was far from employer of the year, was just barely perceptive enough to drag herself away from thoughts of her precious bacteria to notice that Levi was acting rather grumpier than usual. Had she not known any better, she might have thought that he and Erwin were having a sort of extended lovers' quarrel, but alas, she did know better, and as such, was, understandably, somewhat concerned about Levi's heightened irritability.

Levi had even been going so far as to refuse his customary morning cup of coffee milk. This was an extreme cause of concern, and Zöe had been readying her catalogue of business cards, filling the plastic sleeves up with the names and numbers of several well known proctologists in the surrounding area that she could recommend Levi to. From her point of view, that was the only concern that a man of Levi's age could possibly be having. Erwin, however, assured her that there was absolutely nothing wrong with Levi's prostate, a topic that the two of them found quite humorous to discuss whenever Levi was in the immediate vicinity, much to his mortification.

However, Levi's efforts were for naught. He would step on the scale after the end of each workday, his feet already sore and aching from a long day of standing and making drinks, and would frown at the number displayed at the top of the scale. It was a cruel world, he resolved, and Erwin's cooking was far too rich to be conducive to a healthy lifestyle. And, though Levi had never been one to make a New Year's resolution, he was dead set on losing a bit of the pudge he'd gained ever since Erwin had bewitched him into it.

Yes. That was as good an explanation as any, and if anybody asked (not that anybody would be so foolish as to try), Levi would claim the use of sorcery on Erwin's part, and that he must have had ancestors dating back to escapees from the Salem Witch Trials.

* * *

It was more infuriating still that Erwin hadn't seemed to have gained so much as an ounce since meeting Levi. It was beyond frustrating.

* * *

The third night in a row that Levi shunned Erwin's homemade cooking for a salad that Erwin put his fork down, rather heavily - Levi winced - on the rim of his plate and glanced across at Levi with a disapproving stare. "You haven't even touched your curry!" he said, frowning at the little saffron pile of chicken and potatoes that Levi had left on his plate.

"I'll bring it to work tomorrow," Levi promised, a bit halfheartedly. "I'm just not that hungry today."

Erwin eyed him suspiciously, and Levi knew he was done for when his stomach started growling up a storm under the other's close scrutiny and the tantalising aroma of the curry right under his nose. Erwin's gaze softened, and Levi looked anywhere but across the table at him, because this was downright embarrassing and definitely not one of his finer moments. Not for the first time in his life, he cursed his involuntary bodily reactions.

"You've gained weight," Erwin hazarded the guess, and had barely just enough time to duck before Levi's balled-up napkin went flying towards him. "That's what this whole salad thing is about, isn't it? And you haven't been wearing those black jeans of yours, either, even though you know you look really good in them. I was sad to see them go back into the drawer; I'm a big fan."

"Shut up," Levi muttered, flushing and glaring in the other direction. "It's your fault, you know. You cook too well."

Erwin looked at him with surprise. "This is news to me," he said, but Levi was already getting up from the table and gathering up dirty dishes.

Above the clattering and angry clinking coming from the kitchen, where Levi was furiously washing the dishes and smashing the cutlery against each other, Erwin eyed Levi's untouched curry and privately wondered to himself if there wasn't some better method than this. As Levi came back out, plunking a cup of coffee milk in front of Erwin, freshly made whipped cream and all, Erwin eyed his backside, which was rather endearing, and thought that perhaps there was an enjoyable way in which to go about the whole thing.

* * *

The very next morning, before Levi had even had dreams about waking up, Erwin woke him up with kisses trailing down each vertebra of his spine, his stubble scratchy against the skin between Levi's shoulder blades.

"What is it?" Levi mumbled, voice still bleary with sleep. "Go 'way," he slurred, reaching behind him and flapping ineffectually at Erwin with a limp hand. "'M tired."

Erwin didn't respond, and Levi had almost drifted back off into sleep again when he felt fingertips skirting around the general vicinity of his inner thighs.

"Hey," he muttered, now firmly awake. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I'm helping you," was the response, and at this, Levi came fully awake, because this - Erwin's thumb was gently rubbing against the tender furl of his sphincter - was in no way shape or form beneficial to him at the present moment. "Oh, stop it," Erwin said cheerfully, pinning Levi down with a firm hand between his shoulder blades - far too easily, in Levi's opinion. "I've got a bunch of papers to grade today and I would like some sort of treat in the morning before I go marching off to my inevitable doom."

"So, this is really for you," was what Levi wanted to say. Unfortunately, he didn't get quite that far, the words sticking rough in his throat as Erwin, with an ease that only came from a fair bit of practice, pressed his middle and index finger into him, stroking around his walls with familiarity. Levi gasped, struggled up on his elbows, arching to get Erwin's fingers deeper inside him, and, much to his dismay, found that he was already starting to harden, his cock stiffening slightly between his legs.

Levi whined as Erwin's fingers sought out his prostate, rubbing it firmly, massaging it almost, with the pads of his fingertips. Erwin laid soft kisses to the small of his back, his stubble scraping against the sensitive skin, and Levi shuddered as Erwin's other hand circled around his waist to wrap around his cock, thumb circling gently around the flushed head. His hips shuddered back and forth, between Erwin's hands, torn between which sensation to respond to first. Erwin's soft chuckle was muffled, and would have been completely ignored had his lips not been pressed to the creamy skin of Levi's left inner thigh, sending soft vibrations directly up to the smoldering pit of heat bubbling gently in the pit of Levi's stomach.

Levi sobbed as Erwin began to stroke him roughly, in short, quick drags that smeared sticky liquid all across the flushed skin, his fingers still massaging at Levi's insides. He tossed his head back on one particularly firm stroke that had the pool of heat in the pit of his stomach surging forward, unspooling like an anchor, but Erwin clearly had other plans; his hand wrapped itself tightly around the base of Levi's twitching cock, and Levi writhed under his ministrations even as he fought against them.

"You, you bastard," he huffed, without any real meaning behind the words. "I was going to come."

"I know." Levi couldn't see his face, but he would've bet every dollar in his savings account that the other man was smirking.

"Why did you stop, then?" Levi hissed through clenched teeth as he wriggled back on Erwin's hand, squeezing down around the three digits buried inside him, only succeeding in a few light taps to his prostate. Thoroughly unsatisfactory. "That's just downright rude." He was rather annoyed to find that his voice, which he had intended to have a scolding tone, sounded unsteady and desperate.

"I don't believe you've earned it yet," Erwin explained, rather nonchalantly. Having determined that Levi was in no imminent danger of coming any time soon, he resumed his smooth strokes, timing them in rhythm with the fingers buried inside Levi.

Levi was so surprised by this new development that he wasn't aware of Erwin's pinky gently prodding against his entrance, wriggling its way in, until Erwin stroked against his prostate with all four fingers, one right after the other in a rapid sequence that had the desperate desire to come rushing back, making him plead with a voice that surely was not his own for his orgasm.

"Nn, ah, come the fuck on, Erwin," Levi sobbed, sweat and tears of need blinding him as he tried to rock into the tight circle of Erwin's hand, to no avail. "Just, please, please, I'll do whatever you want, I swear -"

"Anything?" Erwin questioned. For a half-second, Levi was almost terrified that Erwin might have some sex dungeon beneath his apartment where he would tie Levi up and have his depraved way with him, but then Erwin was pressing his fingers up against Levi's prostate and moving them in slow, maddening, firm circles that had his mouth falling open in a silent sob.

"Yes, yes," he wailed, his voice just this short of a scream. "Anything, I swear, just fucking let me come already!"

"I'll hold you to that," Erwin said, the slightest hint of a chuckle in his voice as he rolled his fingers over Levi's prostate again, over and over, all four in rapid sequence, once, twice, and Levi cried out as he pulsed white into Erwin's palm.

* * *

Per Erwin's insistence, Levi expanded on his salad-only diet and did not weigh himself again until the end of the week, at which point he was absolutely furious with the other man for extracting such promises of 'anything' under a situation of extreme duress. Erwin pointed out that said situation had hardly been equivalent to torture, and nor were any of the other situations that Levi somehow found himself in, pushed up against the unforgiving mahogany of Erwin's office desk at the university, on the couch while the credits of Hannibal were rolling, in the kitchen, hands still slippery and soapy from the dishes.

That Friday evening, after dinner, he had already determined that Erwin was a sadist beyond belief, and probably had a vast collection of whips and canes in his sex dungeon that Levi had yet to discover. This was when Erwin said he ought to weigh himself, and Levi hurried to the bathroom straight away to find out what the latest damage to his weight had been in the past few days of indulgence.

Much to his surprise, he found that he had indeed lost 1.4 pounds, and was still gaping at the number in shock, stepping on and off the scale again to make sure he had the numbers correct, when Erwin barged in.

"See?" he said, grinning triumphantly at Levi. "You've lost weight, haven't you?"

"I - what - how?" was all Levi could manage. "We even had pasta for dinner last night. Pasta! How is this possible?" He looked at Erwin suspiciously. "You've rigged it, somehow, haven't you?" he asked, eyes narrowed in accusation. "This is not possible."

"Au contraire," Erwin said, in a horrible French accent that Levi felt sure would offend many a Frenchman. "That number is completely legitimate. How, you may ask? One of the many benefits of exercise."

"What exercise?" Levi wanted to know. "Walking to the coffeestore from your car and back is not exactly exercise."

"Allow me to demonstrate," Erwin said, with a wide grin on his face, and Levi only realized what he meant far too late as Erwin pressed him up against the bathroom wall.


	14. Caramel Macchiato

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone. Sorry for not updating. Again. 
> 
> Caramel Macchiato because...sickeningly sweet. Sorry. I don't really like caramel macchiatos. :|

Erwin had definitively determined that Levi was angry with him. There was just no other explanation for it. Levi had squirmed away whenever Erwin tried to cuddle him, flinging his arm unceremoniously back to Erwin's side of the bed/couch/car whenever Erwin tried to wrap an arm around him, protesting that it was far too hot for cuddle weather. This was a downright lie, and not a very good one at that; they hadn't seen temperatures above 40 Fahrenheit in the past four months.  

And Levi, who absolutely refused to wear anything more than an undershirt and boxers to bed, had finally caved and had begun to swaddle himself in one of Erwin's turtlenecks to go to sleep. Erwin, personally, found it quite adorable, the way the dark navy/green/red fabric hung to Levi's mid-thigh, and particularly liked the way in which the fabric clung to the curve of Levi's bottom whenever he crawled out of bed in the dark of the mornings to make coffee. Erwin pretended to be asleep during these occasions, biting at the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing whenever Levi hissed in discomfort as his toes came in contact with the chilly hardwood floor. He would peep out from underneath his eyelashes as Levi crept out of the bedroom, tiptoeing in an effort to not wake Erwin, and would only fully open his eyes when Levi came back, bearing a tray that usually contained breakfast and two steaming mugs of coffee. 

But Levi was definitely angry with Erwin. The breakfasts and the morning coffee and the turtlenecks hadn't stopped, to be sure, but Erwin was sure that he had wounded Levi grievously, somehow, in some way, in some form. 

He had been more irritable as of late, and had kept shying away when Erwin attempted to hug him. Levi spent inordinately long times in the shower these days, and while Erwin had banged on the door more than once, begging Levi to please conserve water and that he would gladly share the shower stall with him, Levi had yelled back each and every time that he quite enjoyed his shower times without bumbling professors taking up all the hot water spray, thank you very much. 

As such, Erwin was at a loss. 

* * *

Valentine's Day dawned bright and crisp, frost forming in little snowflake patterns around the edges of the windows, when Erwin awoke. Levi's foot was twitching rapidly against his calf; he was still adamant about not wearing socks to sleep, no matter how cold it got, and Erwin spent quite a large part of his nights unconsciously warming up Levi's chilled feet and legs with his own. Levi was currently fast asleep, cuddling a pillow protectively to his chest, a little furrow between his dark eyebrows, tufts of hair spilling across the pillowcase like a black sunburst, and Erwin took a moment to appreciate the sheer beauty of the man lying next to him. 

Sometimes Erwin really marveled at how a person like him had managed to charm a person like Levi into living with him. And then Levi would promptly smack him on the forehead with yesterday's newspaper, telling him to wipe that sappy look off his face because it was really quite unbecoming, and did he have to do that at Levi's place of employment? He was embarrassing him. 

Erwin reached beneath the covers, pressed warm fingers against chilled skin of Levi's leg, and smiled quietly as the twitching gradually slowed to a stop. 

He was rather quite adorable like this, Erwin mused, but it still irritated him that he couldn't pinpoint exactly what he had done to make Levi irritated with him. 

* * *

If one were to ask Levi if he were mad at Erwin, assuming that Levi didn't glare one out of his immediate vicinity, he would say: No. I am not angry with Erwin. Why do you ask? 

* * *

When Levi woke up on February 14th, or Valentine's Day, he found Erwin already gone to work. The sheets were cold beside him, and he frowned as he relinquished his death grip on the pillow he clutched to his chest. There was a little Post-It set in the hollow of the pillow next to him that Erwin's head had left behind in the cotton, and Levi became even more disgruntled upon reading it.

"Good morning, cupcake!" Levi was personally not a fan of using sweets as pet names, because it sounded like one was in immediate danger of being devoured by the nearest imbecilic child. "I'm off to work, but I'll be back later. Love you!" 

Levi glared at the Post-It, as though it was personally responsible for all the woes of the world, including but not limited to world hunger and the current state of the American national deficit. There was NOTHING. Not a single mention of the momentous day, not a single "XO!" or even a hint that Erwin even knew what day today was. 

He plucked the Post-It from the pillow and crushed it in his hand. 

He hadn't been mad at Erwin before, but now Levi was definitely a bit...miffed. To say the least. 

* * *

The cafe was in complete and utter chaos. The coffee filters weren't perfectly arranged in stacks of 250, as was their customary arrangement, and fluttered all over the storeroom floor. The cash register refused to open, no matter how many times Zoe banged it with her fist, bribed it with promises of extra-shiny quarters, and other such desperate measures. Levi's latte art, for which he and the cafe were semi-famous in the eyes of university students with no better things to do in the afternoons, suffered horribly, and the steamed milk cats came out looking more like horrifyingly rabid chipmunks, bringing several such university students and even a few working professionals to distraught tears. 

Levi had never been one to set stock by a holiday, and was personally of the opinion that public displays of affection were forms of gruesome, primitive mating calls. He also was of the opinion that Valentine's Day was a ploy created by the American government in an attempt to haul itself out of debt with large bouquets of roses that were most likely genetically engineered and large heart-shaped boxes of chocolates that were most likely low-grade and low-cocoa percentage. 

But he still couldn't help but admit that he was a little bit, okay, quite a bit, irked by the fact that, by half past two in the afternoon, Erwin had not yet shown any signs of recognition for the day. 

* * *

 

 

Erwin sauntered into the cafe at half past five, his briefcase slung jauntily over one Calvin Klein-clad shoulder, whistling a tune that sounded suspiciously like Call Me Maybe. He narrowly avoided certain death by cheerily avoiding Levi's scathing gaze; Eren, who was directly behind him, had received the full force of the look and had promptly melted into a puddle on the floor, rose petals from the bouquet he was holding scattering around him as if in mourning. Mikasa politely nudged her lump of a boyfriend to the side. 

Levi glared across the counter at his boyfriend, who was rapidly falling from grace the longer he stood there, with that stupid grin on his stupid face. 

"Close your eyes," Erwin entreated, and Levi frowned at him and went back to whipping cream furiously. "Come on, please? You're off shift, I had to bribe Zoe with an all-access university laboratory pass." 

Levi would have been perfectly happy to stand at the counter for the remainder of the daylight hours whipping the cream into submission, but his wrist was getting rather tired and there was always the potential worry for early onset arthritis or carpal tunnel, or some other horrifyingly debilitating disease like that that had him finally setting down his whisk and graciously deigning to accept Erwin's hand. 

* * *

Upon opening his eyes as Erwin's Toyota rolled to a stop, Levi found himself looking up at the red-and-white striped awning of one of the more exclusive French restaurants in town. You know the kinds: The ones with Armani clad maitre d's who look you up and down and scoff at you the instant your back is turned, the ones who have their own sommeliers, the ones whose wine lists spanned at least three-quarters of the actual menu. 

Levi was suitably impressed. 

"Happy Valentine's Day," Erwin said, smiling as he leaned across the candlelit table to press a kiss to the corner of Levi's mouth. "I wouldn't want you to think that I forgot." 

That was exactly what Levi had been thinking, but he said nothing. 

"I don't even know how you got reservations here," Levi admitted, looking around as Erwin dove into the breadbasket, ripping apart pieces of olive loaf like a savage. "You have to reserve months in advance." 

"Let's just say I was hopeful about our prospects of lasting until now," Erwin said, spitting bread crumbs all over the table. "And I mean, I  _did_ pass Eren, in spite of your fervent desire to see him fail his first ever university writing course." 

Levi stared at him, dumbfounded. "What does Eren have to do with this?" he asked, eyeing Erwin suspiciously over his glass of merlot. 

"Oh, his parents own the restaurant," Erwin said, flapping a hand at Levi and nearly blowing out the candles. "He gave me a reservation in exchange for a passing grade." 

Levi rolled his eyes, but couldn't help but smile. "That's practically criminal, Mr. Smith," he admonished gently, wagging a finger at his well-meaning oaf of a boyfriend. "That's bribery. Highly frowned upon in the academic institution." 

Erwin merely shrugged, and all but applauded when the waiter came back bearing steak tartare and coq au vin. 

Levi had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing as he watched Erwin dig into his food with gusto from beneath lowered eyelashes. 

* * *

Much to Erwin's credit, he didn't assault Levi until they were well ensconced in the safety and privacy of their home. The instant the front door clicked shut behind them, however, was a completely different matter, and Levi barely had a chance to take a breath before Erwin had wrapped his arms around Levi and started pressing kisses to the back of his neck. 

"Wait, wait, wait," he hissed, trying to nudge Erwin away from the idea of undressing him right there in the foyer. "Don't be an imbecile, surely you can wait until we get to the bedroom."

Erwin agreed, but only just, and looked like his mother had been gravely insulted when Levi gently shoved him down onto the bed and asked him to kindly wait a few moments while he got dressed.

"But isn't that the purpose of sex, Levi?" Erwin asked, his voice coming dangerously close to a whine, and his expression coming dangerously close to a pout. "For me to undress you?" 

Levi had shut the bathroom door firmly in his face, before he caved to the weight of Erwin's puppy dog eyes. 

It was embarrassing, really. Erwin Smith was an accredited university professor, a grown ass man with his own mortgage and his own auto insurance and his own 401K. 

Then again, Levi mused as he stepped into lacy black silk, checking the mirror for the fit, grown ass men sometimes resorted to downright odd behaviors. 

Case in point. 

* * *

Erwin looked up from his folded hands as the bathroom door clicked open. He then promptly wondered if he was hallucinating due to a side effect of those questionable-looking mushrooms the French restaurant had served. 

The man framed in the soft golden light of the bathroom door was undoubtedly Levi. But surely Levi would never be caught dead wearing lingerie. Surely not. 

Erwin rubbed his eyes violently, until his vision was filled with dots and squiggles, before opening his eyes and taking a good look at Levi again. Other than rapidly approaching and becoming larger in his frame of view, the apparel did not change. 

Levi bit his lip nervously, trying to gauge Erwin's expression in the shadow that he cast over the other man's face. Before he had too much time to start worrying about any potential adverse reactions, Erwin reached up, grasped him by the hips, and dragged him over the remaining inches of hardwood towards the bed. His breath was warm and comforting against Levi's thigh, and he shivered as Erwin turned his face a bit to admire the way the sleek black fabric cradled the mound of his cock. He was half-hard, had been that way ever since he'd first tasted the wine at the French restaurant, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Levi was a bit worried that he'd stretch out the elastic of the waistband.

As if he'd read his mind, Erwin pressed a kiss to his rapidly hardening cock through the silk. "I just got a bonus at work," he murmured soothingly, the movement of his lips through the fabric exquisite and delightful. Levi's hips twitched in his hands. "I can buy more of these, if you would be so inclined to repeat this. I know Valentine's Day comes only once a year, but I could die happy knowing I'd be able to see you, like this, more than that." 

Levi opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak, Erwin had tugged down the front of the panties to press a sloppy, wet, open-mouthed kiss to the flushed head of Levi's cock. Levi gasped, his hands flying to tangle themselves in Erwin's hair, and he barely managed to restrain himself from pressing his hips forward to seek out the comforting warmth of Erwin's mouth. 

"You're allowed to move, you know," Erwin said, smiling up at Levi, and Levi was of a mind to slap the smile right off Erwin's face before Erwin pressed the flat of his tongue against the weeping slit and hooked fingers into the waistband of the panties, sliding them down Levi's hips, down grudgingly shaved-smooth legs, to puddle on the floor in a small pool of black. 

With another kiss to the rosy head, Erwin pulled back a bit. After a moment of scrutiny, during which Levi was sorely tempted to push him down onto the bed and demand that he finish sucking him off right this instant, Erwin exclaimed, "That's so sweet of you! You shaved the Batman signal when you were manscaping!" 

Levi gaped at him. While Erwin was correct about the manscaping part, the trimmed, short black hairs at the base of Levi's cock were supposed to be in the design of a heart, and Levi had suffered many itchy, scratchy nights and long stints in the shower to achieve the effect. Which apparently, to Erwin, at least, was only successful in mimicking the call for yet another grown ass man dressed as a bat.

Erwin maneuvered Levi onto the bed, pliant in his state of disbelief, and bit kisses into his neck and shoulders, working his way downwards. He took a few moments to roll dusky nipples between his fingers, eliciting soft gasps and quiet whines that Levi tried to hide in the pillows, before continuing his journey south, fingers brushing against Levi's ribs, tickling. Broad palms gently stroked the insides of Levi's thighs, causing him to squirm, before pressing them apart. 

All thoughts of Batman and other silly things that grown ass men did flew out the window as Erwin pressed a kiss to the furl of Levi's entrance, tongue gently massaging the tight muscle and encouraging it to open, ignoring Levi's half-whimpered protests that it was dirty and he certainly wouldn't be kissing Erwin for the rest of the night, probably for the rest of the month. His thoughts turned into babbles and incoherent mutterings as Erwin slotted two fingers into him, crooking them and stroking along the velvet-hot surfaces of Levi's insides, pressing into the nub of Levi's prostate and massaging firmly. Erwin grinned as Levi writhed in the bedsheets, his hands fisted in the covers and his hips arching towards Erwin's hand. 

"Erwin, I'm stretched enough, can't you just - ah - can't you, nn, just hurry up and fuck me already?" Levi hissed, tossing a halfhearted glare Erwin's way, but Erwin was methodical about his foreplay and refused to budge another inch until Levi threatened to kick him in the side of the head. 

* * *

"Does it really look like a bat?" Levi asked worriedly twenty minutes later, deliciously sore and aching. Erwin had flopped over beside him, clearly in no hurry to get to the shower, or to do anything much at all. "Look at me and tell me the truth."

Erwin mumbled something into the pillow, a large hand sleepily reaching over to pat Levi's softening cock tenderly, appreciatively. 

Levi rolled his eyes, muttered something about grown ass men, and flung Erwin's hand off as he got up to make his way to the bathroom, where, he had already decided, he would promptly be shaving everything off. 

 

 


End file.
